Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
What Do Developers Actually “Owe” Us? | Windbreaker Podcast
8.1k Plays7 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Marty, Frost, and JM8 discuss the relationship between developers and players.
Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
This video is sponsored by Death Trick Double Blind, a non-linear detective visual novel coming March 14th to Steam and Nintendo Switch.
Podcast Hosts and Setup
00:00:09
Speaker
Well, hello everyone and welcome back to Windbreaker Podcast episode number 14 for Monday, March 11th, 2024. I'm Marty Sleva, once again joined by Frost and Jim Mate and producer Eric behind the scenes. As a reminder, Yahtzee and the Adventures Night crew are still out in our nation's capital. They're filming the remainder of
Adventurers Nigh Kickstarter Success
00:00:31
Speaker
season four. And also, if you guys didn't see, we launched a Kickstarter.
00:00:34
Speaker
for the Adventurers Nigh card game. Launched it Saturday evening, already hit the goal. We're about to triple the goal. But there's all sorts of great stretch goals there. So if you haven't, check out the Kickstarter. Play as your favorite Adventurers Nigh character in a drinking game too.
00:00:51
Speaker
to out-drink the others and leave them on the floor of the Adventurers Nightclub. Lots of cool stuff there, so thank you to everyone who's already supported that, and thank you to everyone who supports us on Patreon, and obviously via Super Chats, we're gonna get to those in the back half of the episode.
Helldivers and Live Service Games Discussion
00:01:04
Speaker
But we got a goodie for you guys today, I'm glad Jamaite's here, because I know Jamaite has a lot of thoughts on this. This started, our topic started as a...
00:01:12
Speaker
Kind of a reaction I saw to, uh, so Helldivers came out a few weeks ago and was, uh, I feel like universally, uh, beloved. And it was immediately one of those games where it's like, this is how you do a live service. This is how you do it. You don't do it like Suicide Squad. You do it like this. And eventually I was like, well, the, the table's going to turn.
00:01:31
Speaker
on this, like something bad's gonna happen. And sure enough, a few days ago, we got sort of a minor wrinkle in this where the Arrowhead Studios released a patch, which obviously had some balance changes, nerfed some popular weapons, fans got mad at that and expressed their anger, and then an artist for the studio sort of responded to them a little cheekily and pretty much said that like, oh, it's not that it's gotten nerfed, it's just like you kind of got filtered, like you're just not good enough, like plenty of people are still clearing this.
Player-Developer Dynamics: Communication and Balance
00:02:01
Speaker
Fans got mad at that and then the studio had in creative director had to come in and sort of apologize for the tone and say that's not a respectful way to talk to the audience and so this just. Got me thinking about the larger topic of.
00:02:17
Speaker
our relationship, not even our relationship as creators or as press or whatever, but just our relationship as players with the people who make these things. What do they owe us? What do we them? Where are these lines? These lines are always shifting. What sort of feedback needs to be taken from us, if any, in an art form like this? I know that's a big thing and we can kind of jump into it wherever you guys want.
00:02:43
Speaker
I'm excited. Everything. Everything. I guess right at the start, what did you think about this? I would just call this a minor kerfuffle. Kerfuffle? Kerfuffle?
00:02:55
Speaker
That's not a minor kerfuffle. It's just, you know, somebody working in the industry gets a little, gets a little riled up and they could have used a little more PR training, but it is what it is. We're all thinking it. We're just looking for the correct way to word it that you'd put that as a suitable email. You know what I'm saying? Like, Oh, it has come to our attention that your skill differential might be the cause of your issues, but we will work on that instead of just like a good bitch, which is the kind of tone that you sort of take.
00:03:22
Speaker
You know? But then, whose fault is it? Whose fault isn't it? To me, I think we just, we skip the actual discussion and we go straight to like, oh, you suck at this game. Like it just ends right there. My brother in Christ, you're the developer, right? Who's your target audience? I wish there were a label.
00:03:41
Speaker
that very specifically, like these are the structures, these are the commandments, this is what the game's always gonna be. Because I find live service to be too hard to write off. It's hard to say this isn't for me, because they're trying to reach so many people, you know? So what are you gonna do there? But on the topic of this one, I think what it was the nerfing, yeah? I started that, I went into it on Twitter as well of saying like, I don't understand PVE balance.
00:04:09
Speaker
I don't get it. How do you guys feel about that? Jay, you know your balance. Marty, you play single player games. How do you feel about PvE balance even though it is an online structure?
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's justified. I do understand it. I guess in a game that is built for this is a live service, right? So the rate at which how fast the community clears the content and how they interact with it does matter over time, especially considering it's multiplayer.
00:04:42
Speaker
The aspect with Helldivers is that a huge aspect of it is that you can kill each other. And if there's a gun, like, there was one, I can't remember what it's called, it's like the Tesla coil gun. It's like the ARK. Oh, the ARK thingy, yeah.
00:04:57
Speaker
horrific and if you're anywhere near an enemy it will bounce to you and will kill you instantly and let's say that gun is horrifically overpowered in this instance therefore a lot of people are using it which means there's a lot
Balancing Games: Strategies and Community Feedback
00:05:12
Speaker
more not just accidental team killing but it's like rampant that does have a big impact on how a lot of players who aren't using those weapons perceive the game
00:05:22
Speaker
I'm sure. So tweaking those things doesn't make the game that much harder for people who use those weapons. Well, I guess it does because it was easy before. But it does improve things for everyone else. It brings all players onto this kind of level playing field. The developers are trying to get all the weapons to basically doing the same amount of damage each. You just distribute it in a different way.
00:05:47
Speaker
And that's a very difficult task and sometimes they need to make these changes and I think that they're completely justified in doing that.
00:05:54
Speaker
I agree in the chaining, because I do think, for the board, what do developers owe us? The least amount of frustration is possible, alright? Obviously you can't eliminate all of them, but I'll take the yellow paint, I will take the, if the chain lightning is starting to be annoying for the players to the detriment of their fun, absolutely. But whenever it's stuff like, oh, this gun was outperforming, I'd rather see buffs.
00:06:20
Speaker
to everything else or changes to everything else instead of just like, oh, this was just doing too well. Yeah, you think of it this way, though, do so if a gun is outperforming others, do you buff all other weapons? But then in that case, you'll have to buff the enemies.
00:06:38
Speaker
to because the overall power level of all of the weapons is going up you have to bring the enemies up slightly because otherwise the game just automatically gets a lot easier so they'd have to double buff all of the weapons and enemies rather than just nerfing
00:06:54
Speaker
two or three weapons that are outperforming the others i can see i can see both i do agree you know that there are multiple routes to why would you need to why would you need to buff the enemies if it's one of those things where like the the balance is really good with these certain weapons and then the other weapons no one's using because they don't feel like they're working as well why would bringing those weapons up to the caliber of the weapons that are being used not be enough
00:07:18
Speaker
That's genuine curiosity. I'm just like... Yeah, it depends on the extreme you're in, right? So I'm not too into... I love Helldivers and I play a lot, but I'm not so entrenched in it that I know the individual weapon balance. But let's say the Arkfroer weapon... This isn't the case, but let's just be hypothetical. Say it's stupidly overpowered and it's really, really good. And because of that, nobody else is using the remainder of the weapons that could be used, none of the stratagems.
00:07:45
Speaker
There's two possibilities. We can even nerf the arc thrower, which will piss a lot of people off, or we can buff the weapons that aren't being used and bring them up to the power level of the arc thrower. Well, in that instance, it depends on how powerful the arc thrower is, right? If the arc thrower is one-shotting most enemies and taking down, you know, heavy armored enemies when it shouldn't be,
00:08:07
Speaker
buffing everything else makes the game that difficult if you were using the Arc Pro, if that makes any sense. So it all depends on the power level of the thing, whether you should buff other things or you should nerf the individual thing. It just depends on how it's performing.
00:08:23
Speaker
Yeah, and that's always, you know, I don't know, like what is the game that has the best balance in terms of like, is there a game where it's like, oh man, every fucking weapon is viable. I guess that's like fighting games. Well, I guess even fighting games has, it's kind of tiered like competitive characters and everything. Yeah. Yeah. No game can be completely, it was like Overwatch, like when Overwatch was beloved and before everyone turned on Overwatch, which I guess could be another piece of this puzzle. Like Overwatch felt like it was relatively
00:08:49
Speaker
Balanced, right? Spoken like a man who didn't play. I said this in my Mario Kart video. I don't think people love games because they're balanced. I think people love them because they're not.
00:09:05
Speaker
My theory as far as any games being balanced is any game that acknowledges it's not balanced but gives you a chance to be on the imbalanced side, that's closer to
Fan Expectations vs. Developer Intentions
00:09:15
Speaker
balance. Like CSGO, super famous, super competitive, the maps are not balanced in a proper 50-50 chance of winning kind of way. It's more like
00:09:24
Speaker
on offense, you have a 20, 80% chance of winning, but then you get to be on offense. Yeah. So you'll swap. It's like football, right? That new, what was it? That new overtime rule that they put in where like both teams touched the ball now instead of just like, you know, one in that way. Acknowledging that he obviously has an advantage. Exactly. So like acknowledging that you have no balance and essentially just kind of giving others their turn, I guess is the way I go for it.
00:09:53
Speaker
When it comes to balancing these games though, I mean, again, you both have way more experience in live service games. I mean, for us, you have like distinct live service experience and stuff like Smite, like sort of being a part of a community. You had a voice that could probably be listened to ostensibly, right? Like by people who changes. My question is like, what?
00:10:12
Speaker
At what point is listening to the fans who are vocal? At what point does it go from being like a positive to, wait, should we be listening to this vocal minority because they don't represent like what they want from the game is probably way different than what the random schmucks weren't saying. Let's zoom out so we can hit the title topic then in that case.
00:10:38
Speaker
People, I love humans. They're my favorite species. You know, a hot take there. They are great at giving you a sort of a feel of how they feel. They're great for that. They're not the best at wording how they feel. And they're horrible at telling you what to do.
00:11:01
Speaker
So you can sort of just use them as this vocal way of gauging the temperature, so to speak, of people. But you also have to take into account the silent majority. If people are satisfied with your game, they won't talk. They won't say it. They'll be playing your game. So you have to understand that most of the outcry is just from it's always essentially going to be churning unhappy players.
00:11:22
Speaker
And so the responsibility I think is like, you should listen at the very least, but definitely don't act on everything. I think what's so interesting about this space is that humans are a puzzle, so to speak. And if they're like, oh, this feels so bad because it does too much damage and everything else doesn't, right? Then it's like, okay, we have to look into that and not just like, hey, buff, nerf. Because I think if we're going into live service,
00:11:45
Speaker
It is like the food service and part of that is hospitality. So it is a space where you are being heard, you are being listened to, they are trying to accommodate you, but customers not always right. I think what I'd like, and this is something that most won't bring up, is what do I want out of a developer? I want a little spine.
00:12:06
Speaker
I want a little, this is what my game is. I'm sorry if this isn't what you want. They even posted that one Twitter thing where I said a game for everyone is a game for no one. But so that's why it kind of was a little antithetical to me of like, all right, well, now I'm going to have to balance the gun. We're going to have to put the mittens back on because we might have said something mean to someone who was antagonizing one of our developers over and over. Oh, God, just don't say anything. Get away from the Twitters. Yeah.
00:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, no, so listen, listen to the people's, but don't. I think solve their issues, but just try to get away from their words.
00:12:45
Speaker
trying to get away from all that kind of stuff. A lot of it's perception, right? So I have a friend who works at Riot and we chat all the time and they worked on the balance team. They no longer work for the balance team, but they did. And there was a character that was extremely overpowered to play in the meta. And what they did was in the next patch, they horrifically nerfed that
00:13:14
Speaker
character into the ground so that they wouldn't be dominating the scene. So after they implemented this patch, the play rate of that character dropped by 50%. Their win rate went down by like 12%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but is a lot in MOBA. And everyone was complaining. They feel so weak. They feel terrible. Everything is bad. But it turns out they forgot to actually implement the nerfs. They just said they did them.
00:13:42
Speaker
Oh, placebo nerfs? Yeah, so it's placebo. It's how you perceive things, and a lot of players will see nerfs like, oh, you know, a 10% debuff to this weapon in heldovers, and think... Yeah.
00:13:55
Speaker
this weapon is unplayable like this is garbage they've broken the game but really and this is where it
Player Engagement in Live Service Games
00:14:01
Speaker
comes back to that tweet and i don't fully agree with that tweet but part of it is you know a lot of it's on you right like you've got to play a certain way you've got to perceive it a certain way rather than thinking because these numbers were decreased the thing i liked is dead right it's a lot of it's on your end
00:14:17
Speaker
They're almost like the concierge of the hotel in that sort of way, because perception is king. We reached the point in Smite where it was essentially, no game is perfectly balanced, but this was really, really good. And so you could play almost any character in so many different ways. And then it's like, OK, now all we have to do is just input more content. But people almost nowadays, especially in live service, they want change.
00:14:42
Speaker
They want that sort of maintenance. So it's interesting to see some of these newer live service games have a very active, someone in charge of actively changing the layout. Helldivers 2, if you want stuff happening instead of just stuff to do, they have a guy named Joel, who is the dungeon master.
00:15:00
Speaker
And he's the one that's like pulling all the strings and the levers and giving you that sort of change up in gameplay. It's like as you are conquering more of this world, more content, more enemies, different types are spawning because Joel's like, all right, it's time to change this everlasting story. So.
00:15:18
Speaker
Tanks, not tanks, mechs are the perfect example of that. Like how they introduced mechs into the game was masterfully done as a live service. So like the overarching wall, that is, you know, this war mode that's constantly going with Helldivers. Players knew because they were in game that, not tanks, mechs existed in game, but they didn't know how they were getting to get them. And they thought, oh, they'll patch them into the game whenever, right? Really, really hotly anticipated thing. And then randomly.
00:15:48
Speaker
in game, they were like, oh, the automatons are on the planet where we make the mechs, go liberate this planet. And they didn't say you'd get them, but everyone was like, oh, shit, like this is it, like.
00:16:04
Speaker
this is a step towards that yeah everyone participated in it it was done i don't know the exact speed but it was done in less than a day and it takes a lot to liberate a planet it's just like dangling keys in front of people but it's just dangling now mechs are in the game they're like here you go and yeah it's a really cool way of like narratively tying in like how are you gonna get this cool thing that people have been wanting
00:16:24
Speaker
So good. And they didn't do a big PR thing where they're like, oh, let's let's tweet about it for eight weeks and then build up to it and have this big event. They just shadow dropped it and were like, it's happening. So this encourages players to like be engaged and want to stay in the game and like be around for when these things happen. Because people who participated got a load of currency as well. It was like you actively got rewards. Everyone gets the max in the game. If you play now, you can get back. But
00:16:52
Speaker
That's such an interesting way of doing it. It's amazing. They're leaning more into that because before he would have like in WoW, some of you may not know, Blizzard, they would, if a player did something spectacular or a notable person passed away, they'd get something in the game to commemorate them. Same thing for CSGO, same thing for all these other games. So now you feel while you're there that it is alive and you are kind of at any point in time being a part of history.
00:17:19
Speaker
presence i guess is the other thing like what do developers always if it's live service i think you know their actual presence of feeling like they're there uh people tend to get very angry when they feel god has abandoned us god is dead so this game is dead god is abandoned us yeah god is abandoned if you look at all the major like theologies
00:17:42
Speaker
Look what happens when people think God's gone. They make their golden idols. They make all the other things. They get chained to rocks and eaten by vultures. You know, it's not good.
00:17:51
Speaker
So I think, uniformly, the idea of players feeling like they have sort of this agency or ownership of the story is ultimately, by and large, a good thing.
Creative Integrity vs. Player Entitlement
00:18:03
Speaker
Like, this is, like you said, this is what's going to get people staying around, being able to be like, I was there when this happened, so I felt like I was a soldier in this war, like what the game is trying to do.
00:18:15
Speaker
And I know both of you really you both are very great at at sort of speaking for the player and speaking for the everyman And so i'm going to go against the everyman now at what point does that become dangerous where people feel like they start to have ownership over the creative decisions of a work of art and that players start getting a sense of entitlement of I bought your game and or i've played your game for x amount of time And so I should have input on how this game is made because there's not
00:18:45
Speaker
art, like that doesn't exist in other forms of art. I mean, maybe it does and maybe I'm just not as tuned in, but like people don't have that kind of relationship or sense of ownership with movies or TV shows or music or books. Whereas it feels like in games, like things are kind of more ingrained, which can lead to some of these scenarios where you get this like genuine title and that's when I think stuff becomes dangerous.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, honestly, where's the line you say? I mean, I think in the end, the developer should always have 1000% control and I'll still give feedback, but I'm of the camp of like anyone who gives you feedback is they've got the brain rot. No one else will listen. It's like hitting on the waitress. She has to work there. She's not letting you.
00:19:29
Speaker
Same for the developers, we have to actually actively listen to you. I don't think at any point in time, it's almost a detriment whenever they say this is for the community, from the community, by the community, because that's how you end up just kind of trapped there, making no one happy, because you have to acknowledge that there's different kinds of players and things that others actively enjoy, others will hate.
00:19:51
Speaker
So you're just going to, if you try to make everyone happy, we'll make no one happy. So I don't, I don't think a developer should ever. Oh, um.
00:19:59
Speaker
anyone, anything in that regard. They make it hard on themselves to create that separation of like, oh, I give you feedback and I found bugs for you. And yeah, I like it more when it's just like, all you did was buy cosmetics. You don't know anything, right? Yeah. You're just a, you're just a, ultimately you're just a customer at this store. And like, if you start acting fool, we can, we can tell you get the fuck out. Yeah.
00:20:24
Speaker
I think there's perspectives on this. There's multiple, but a lot of it comes down to genre.
Games as Art vs. Products
00:20:30
Speaker
In my eyes, I think live service and multiplayer games like MOBAs and MMOs, there is an element of you duo your audience something and their thoughts should be heard. But the two ways I look at it is games can either be viewed as art or they can be viewed as a product.
00:20:53
Speaker
with a product you have the right to you know if your sandwich has shards of glass in it to take it back and to say hey these shards of glass they're making my experience terrible yeah and offer that feedback and get things changed you do not walk into an art gallery
00:21:09
Speaker
and demand that Van Gogh changes Starry Night. Yeah. Yeah. That is art. It should be during the day. It shouldn't be at night. Right. You can interpret it however you want. You can view it however you want. You can experience it however you want. But it is not your decision to have those things changed because it doesn't line up with your viewpoint. Games are art. Anyone who disagrees in the chat, you can leave because you're wrong. Games are an art form. And as players, just because you paid for it does not mean
00:21:39
Speaker
the developers owe you anything and changing it because it is an art form. When we bleed into live services, when they're very much more products than they are, an experience that is to be digested, I see the argument of, well, you should change these things because it's making it terrible for us, but there's different
00:22:03
Speaker
There's different ways of looking at it. And it's not black and white. There's these, they cross over. Oh, no. And like, that's not saying that, oh, the artist is always going to be making the right decisions because that's, there's plenty of bad things. Those were the decisions of the creators. And you're like, oh, this is how we get Madam Web. Oh, God. You remember the culling?
00:22:24
Speaker
I do remember the calling game that was the main dev refused to balance the game or fix any of the annoying parts and he would just mock the community it was the hottest game on twitch for like two weeks and then it died because he's like um don't skip leg day
00:22:41
Speaker
I remember there was another game. I associate a bunch of these games that like came and went really quickly. There was a game called Firefall. And I remember a thing where the CEO of the company would get liquored up and go into like either Discord or Reddit or on Twitter would field suggestions and then just implement them into the game drunk. And at one point a player was like, I don't like the PvP mode. And he just fucking removed it. And it just never came back. And he was like clearly drunk at like midnight. And like, that is insane.
00:23:12
Speaker
It's his game, you know. It's his game, but that is like a certifiably insane way to make art. What do you call it? It's like with Power World, where people go, oh, now I don't know if they'll finish the game. I was like, I wouldn't. If I made that much money, it was like on the next day. He would never hear from me again. I guarantee you they wouldn't. You'd never see me again. Absolutely not. See ya.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, it also, it feels like this is part and parcel with the conversation from a few weeks ago with Xbox when the news came out that some of their games would be going third party and like Xbox has spent such a long time
00:23:49
Speaker
Um, sort of cultivating this fan base where it felt like the, the, the, the, the brain rot people on Twitter and on YouTube who are like ride or die fans of a corporation felt like they were like best friends with, you know, Phil Spencer, Aaron Greenberg, like these, these high ranking Xbox executives. Yeah. And they were like, this is it. Like we're a part where we have a seat at the table. And then when.
00:24:13
Speaker
Microsoft made a decision that financially makes a lot of sense for Microsoft because they're like, well, these get these games, let's put these on Switch and PlayStation and make more money off of them. Those fans were like, how could you? We had a seat at the table. And it's like, well, you didn't. You didn't because like you were, you know, you thought your buddy buddy with a corporation, but ultimately it's a fucking corporation like I don't as much as I love Nintendo and I buy Nintendo shit. I have no qualms that Miyamoto would walk over my dead body.
00:24:41
Speaker
He would just walk over my dead body for his sweet, sweet Pikmin. I'm going to say, excuse me, Marty-san. I see he steps up. And then he would find out I have a GameCube emulator and he would sue me into a bloody...
00:24:56
Speaker
But even speaking of Nintendo though, that reminded me of Nintendo is doing this weird thing recently where they're just not saying who's developing their games. So this Peach game is coming out in like a week and they have not said who's developing it. Like if it's internal Nintendo, if it's a second party partner, who it is. And their official response was, you can wait until you finish the game and see the credits. I'm like, that's insane.
00:25:21
Speaker
I don't know like and I think they said like someone datamined it and it was like oh it's the studio that made like Yoshi's Woolly World or whatever so it's like why not just say it's that like that's like a truly insane thing I don't know maybe that's a Japanese like a cultural thing that I'm just I just don't know where it's like you shouldn't care who made this thing but it seems very strange like it would have been better PR to have said nothing than to have said that and
00:25:47
Speaker
To have said, yeah, yeah, wait. That's amazing. To our patients. Honestly, I wish more games would just be like, you know, touch grass, get out of my face. What are you doing? Oh, another anime profile picture company yelling me about how my game sucks, but they put in triple digit hours already. Grow up, you know, like, just a little reality shake, just a little one, you know? That stripper don't love you, bro.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah. It's dad stripper. Don't love you. Um, yeah, like, I don't know. I also saw some other people saying earlier that like, um, you know, what developers OS is a finished game or what developers OS is a good game or like, whatever that is. And it's like, I don't think they always a good game. Like that's in the eye of the beholder, right? The finished thing I can see it is,
00:26:42
Speaker
you know, as someone who was playing games where what you'd get on the cartridge or the disc was just it. And warts and all. If there was a wart in there, then that was going to be there forever. Whereas now you play a game and when I review a game, any game, I'm not even talking about any specifically, I get a giant list of, hey, the version you're playing is still kind of fucked up and day one, these things are going to be fixed. And I'm like, that is, why don't we just delay every game a week then?
00:27:07
Speaker
yeah you guys are making me sound crazy yeah it should or we had to do a thing like I had an old uncle and he was always late for everything and so we just started telling him everything was an hour uh earlier there you go and that's how you get around it maybe that's how that's like the daylight savings time thing yeah daylight savings time that's amazing so they owe you a finished game show do they owe you all the content because balacho does this thing where you can just unlock everything
00:27:32
Speaker
And I remember that was an old Total Biscuit thing because he was hella pro-consumer, even against their own detriment sometimes. But he would say they bought it.
00:27:42
Speaker
Let them have it all. Let them just have it all. I'm like, eh, this is fair. If I sell you a little Caesar's pizza, what do I care if you put it in your shoes? Because it just, it's orthopedic for you. See me, they should have it all. It should just have almost like a DVD menu, where it's like, if I want to go to the end of the game, I could just go to the end of the game. Yeah, if you want to turn on God mode and ruin it for yourself, you already paid. You know what I mean? Especially if it's single player, right? Yeah, if it's single player, it affects nobody. Enjoy, just not my source code.
00:28:11
Speaker
It's the looking for raid water warcraft issue, right? So, raiding in early water warcraft was a prestigious, very difficult thing to do. Like, you'd need to get, you know, early on 40 people, real people, to arrange to do this raid in one space. And it was very difficult, and the rewards you would get from it would be very prestigious. Reflective rewards. But then, I can't remember, I think it was in Cataclysm?
00:28:38
Speaker
introduced looking for raid which was a looking for group mode for raids which made and it was a very easy way of doing raids with random people it gave lesser rewards but their idea was that it would allow every player who bought the expansion the opportunity to at least see the raids because before you could buy an expansion and if you weren't good enough and dedicated enough you would not see that content yeah yeah and the argument is well
00:29:07
Speaker
Is it good to have some content that only the top 20% of your playbase are going to see? Or do the people who paid for it deserve to see that stuff? And that's a tricky question. Then we're back to that sort of like any kind of DLC or what about hard games, you know?
00:29:24
Speaker
You didn't you didn't pay to beat it. You're paying for an experience I guess. Yeah. Oh The only Sort of dovetailing with that the the one of the few times I can remember a Nerf coming for me since I only play single-player games was well I guess I only played the Elden Ring single-player was when they they nerfed the Horfrost stomp you guys remember the Horfrost stomp in Elden Ring
00:29:49
Speaker
It was like one of those crazy OP things in the first few weeks. And then I think as it was OP and they took it out, which I assume was for PVP purposes and stuff. But that was the first time where I was like, Oh no, I needed this. I think this is the only way I defeated the godskin duo in Crumbling Farm of Zula. I just like fucking spammed that. And I'm like, they took it from me. I needed that. Just put them to sleep, you know?
00:30:16
Speaker
It was so hard. There's so many. There's one who's very tall, there's one who's very fat, and I don't like either. Classic. Classic pairing. A little bit of a lower one, Hardy. Yeah, I could get that though, because it was like for PVP as it were. Yeah. Well, the question is, was it PVP? Or is it like we were looking at for single player experiences?
00:30:39
Speaker
Is it because it does trivialise a lot of the painstakingly balanced fights that they've made? I mean, hot take, I don't think any of the bosses in Elden Ring are balanced at all. But, you know, they want it to be a certain way and to take a certain amount, you know, levels-wise, right? They're like, we kind of want people to be around this level, have this much experience to try and get into this next tier of content. If a spell can trivialise every single boss in every encounter,
00:31:05
Speaker
then that doesn't break their game and could make it worse for people. So, but also makes it better for some. So, shit. I'm of the opinion of no texties, backsies, number one. And then, yeah, so like once it's out in the game, you keep in that. And then number two, also coming from that time of video games where it's like the game was whatever it was, sometimes it was broken stuff. And people say players will optimize the fun out of their game. But I don't think players are that good at math, so to speak.
00:31:33
Speaker
And I think those things were useful, like the noob tube in Call of Duty, the fireball spam in Street Fighter, Zurg's in, what was it, Starcraft or whatever. That strategy that like, it helps noobs, so to speak, like actually beat the game. It is almost their mechanical easy mode, so to speak. And then if you want to branch out more, feel free. But I feel like a lot of gamers only have one playthrough in them.
00:31:57
Speaker
Sometimes not even that. And if they're gonna play it on the easy mode, then you know what? Have at it. You know, step on foreskin and toes.
00:32:06
Speaker
I'll step on five skins. That's how serious I'm about this. With the whorefrost and all that stuff. Yeah, with the whorefrost. I would never say that about you, Frost. Whoa, that whorefrost. They nerfed all the armored core bosses. And I get, no wait, yeah, that had nothing to do with PVP. What'd the boss have to do with it? That's why I still- This boss taking shots. I keep my armored core on offline mode because I'm just, I was like, I want to beat them on the original- But you also want to beat it without upgrading your back. That's like head injury status. That's different.
00:32:38
Speaker
That's Marty had injury status, right? That is something else there. But as far as like, if I had to say, what do developers always? Is that I came into this space to see someone else's vision and their passion, you know, they owe it to themselves.
00:32:56
Speaker
to be as passionate as they can without trying to compromise their own vision, without trying to like chase the next dollar, because that's the thing that people really, really want. And that can't be put to words. No one is willing or capable of admitting that we don't know what the hell we're doing. We didn't even know this game would be so special to us before it showed up. So why would you listen to us after the fact? You know, you're the one driving, you take it, you go for it. Absolutely. But maybe just, you know, don't tell them skill diff online. Is that too much to ask for?
00:33:24
Speaker
There are certain things where it's like, oh, maybe just like text that in your group thread or something. DM me, my DMs are open. Send that to your pals. I was going to argue with Nick about this, where I'm like, whenever you start feeling the need to publicly dunk on someone, you got to create a group thread and just dunk on that person there.
00:33:44
Speaker
And then you're like, Oh, this, I feel better. I got my dunking done. And then I didn't have to, I didn't have to get it. And also people will tell you you're wrong if you are wrong, right? Yeah. And then you're like, Ooh, I totally, yeah. This is probably good. I didn't publicly do this dunk. Yeah. Yeah. One of the other.
00:33:59
Speaker
That being said, I have an infinite sympathy for developers and creators and artists. That sympathy starts wading very quickly when you start getting to the publisher level. Because that's when I'm like, if you want to be mad at people, these people get mad at. Be mad at the people with the monies, the people making the decisions, that the developers are like, well, fuck it. I guess we have to do this, that kind of thing. I'm not saying all publishers are evil, because that's clearly not the case.
00:34:24
Speaker
When we're talking about the systemic roots of the the issues we have with a lot of modern games it feels like It's a step above the developer a lot of times Yeah, yeah, or Or it's hard to pinpoint, right? I wish I could just be like it's always these publishers But I've also seen some devs kind of get into their own heads. That's why It is a difficult space to be in in that sense. Well, so like in this instance
00:34:50
Speaker
Publishers will promise whatever, but some developers also over promise it. Do they always that at least where they're like, Oh, I hope to have this in the game. You know, is that now an advertisement? What was shit? What was we were talking a few weeks ago about? It was dead cells.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yes, there you go. Yeah, wait, what was that all about? I have like a vague memory. Oh, dead cells, they're like, all right, it's finally going to be done. And to everyone else, that looks like crazy, that people are crying out for like six years or whatever. Yeah, yeah, like it had to end at some point, but they had promised that it was going to continue. So now it's like, did you owe us that because you promised it?
00:35:30
Speaker
Sure, yeah. When I first saw that story, I'm like, how entitled are people if you're getting mad that a game gave you six years or whatever, five years, however long it's been, of updates and they're stopping now. And then you were like, well, actually they promised this one thing. And then they pulled back on it to shift resources to the next project. I was like, oh, okay. Maybe at that point. I also just think we need to stop as a whole just promising things.
00:35:55
Speaker
That's what I'm saying. Anytime we lock a date up, I'm like, don't say the date. Just say, hey, maybe this thing is in the works. Like keep it vague until that thing is ready to launch because you don't know what's going to happen. Like where is that line between just, uh, I'm just talking versus you're the guy making it. This is false advertising now.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. There's two things for me. There's one which is, you know, on the whole topic of advertisement and stuff like that, the developers and especially publishers have a duty to their players to only advertise things that they're pretty sure are going to be in the, you know, the product.
00:36:29
Speaker
Things can change and they do change, but if it's a major feature and you have been sold on that, right? Not necessarily trailers, but let's say on the Steam page, says there's a mechanic in the game. That's the thing it's all doing. It's not in the game. That's just false advertisement. Yeah. But also part of it, and this comes back to the whole overarching question of, you know, what do developers owe us? Artistically, nothing. They can make the changes all they want. But if it was
00:36:54
Speaker
intentional or not that's when things need to change and it is owed to the community so again i'm playing a lot of it so i'm gonna go give the water warcraft example again
00:37:03
Speaker
There are lots of classes in World of Warcraft. There are lots of different classes in a lot of games. The developers do not intend to balance the game in such a way so that one of these classes is unplayable. They do not intend to do that, but sometimes things, you know, happen. These classes are unplayable. It's a miserable experience for the people who main that class. Those players of that class, I believe, are owed balance changes because they
00:37:33
Speaker
Blizzard would not intend that, so they are owed that so they can play the game effectively, right? But if it was intentional, and it pisses off a load of players, like the balance changes in Helldivers, I don't think the developers owe anything because that was an intentional change, not an unintentional one that they needed to balance out or something like that. Sure, sure.
00:37:58
Speaker
I like that. I don't know if Ludo is agreeing or disagreeing with you by squeaking that away. Knowing Ludo, probably disagreeing. I mean, technically now it's just... I assume that these games are as fleeting as ever. The new TOSs, because I read them once, everyone knows how long, now say, well, we can change the game whenever to do whatever. And we might need to, so this game can just not be anything ever one day.
00:38:22
Speaker
Is that like a standardized, almost like boilerplate line? I'm seeing it become more boilerplate. Cyberpunks was the only unique one because, well, their whole thing was unique. Did you read Cyberpunks TOS? No, I don't read any of those. Oh, come on, Marty. You love reading. It's very in character. It's quite nice. Oh, if it's in character, that'd be fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're very in character. Yeah.
00:38:47
Speaker
Brian Cox, Emmy winner Brian Cox, to voice all the TOSs. If I could listen to Brian Cox, the father from Succession, voice all the terms of services, I would do that. The guy from the Tekken trailer? Yeah, John Tekken himself. John Tekken. I love that they got him, like, hey, can you do a Tekken lower recap? I thought he'd be a fighter. Like, oh no way, Succession Colab.
00:39:12
Speaker
Great. So you guys want to jump into Super Chat? There's a lot of Super Chat and I'm sure a lot of this will tie into other topics we've had.
00:39:24
Speaker
Remember, if this is our Super Chat portion, get your Super Chats in. We will read all of them, starting with Steamtastic Vagabond with $6.99 Canadian dollars. Thank you so much, Steamtastic. I'm just shouting out Shogun Showdown, a banger roguelike that deserves more attention, flabble knockers. I don't know what Shogun Showdown is. I thought you were shouting out Shogun, the Hulu series, and I was gonna be like, hell yeah. And then you added the word Showdown, and I don't know what that is. You know what that is, Frost? You like Roguelike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're the Roguelike guy?
00:39:53
Speaker
And I have played that one. Yeah, it's, um, yeah, it's, it's, uh, how do you describe it? It is term based combat, but a lot of the emphasis is on moves that move, um, move you on the tiles. It's like six tiles and it's all about positioning as much as the moves. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, the aesthetic is great, but it's a lot about just being a well-positioned, uh, strategic Shogun, if you will.
00:40:20
Speaker
Well, there you go. Learn how to be a Shogun. Thank you so much for the donut. Tommy salty with 10 Zwoti. Thank you so much, Tommy. Devs OS games made in decent working conditions. Wait a minute. The end of the scene would be gone. The end of the scene would be gone. The problem is I agree. Also, a lot of our favorite games would be gone.
00:40:40
Speaker
I do not think the working conditions at a lot of my favorite developers are probably good. And a lot of them we don't know about because, um, a lot of the examples of the communication and stuff we use today, we're obviously from Western devs because that sort of communication doesn't really exist in a lot of Japanese devs. Like we got a tweet this weekend from Miyamoto, but it was just Miyamoto here. There's a new Mario movie in development. Please be excited. And that's the communication we get from Miyamoto. Yes.
00:41:08
Speaker
Miyamoto's not into fucking men cheese arguing with people over like whether nabbit was was Opie in fucking Super Mario wonder, but No, it's not possible
00:41:19
Speaker
I'm in no way shape or form, do not misconstrue this chat. Am I advocating for crunch? But even without crunch, the normal working hours for game devs are not normal. They're not nine to fives, because they're always working on these things all the time. Every game dev I know is obsessed with the project they're working on. It's not a normal job. They're little game goblins. They are a little bit of rum and then they're just... Yeah, balance, balance these. Great prescription.
00:41:48
Speaker
Like, go on some game documentaries. The way they talk about their life, working on a garage is, you know, five mortgages, three kids. They're good. Five mortgages and three kids. You got to get three mortgages and five kids. That's how you do it. One's a lot, Shelby. Dr. Theo with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much, Dr. Theo. One thing I think they should owe us is to be more transparent about everything. I feel like we would be in a better world if everyone communicated.
00:42:16
Speaker
I think transparency is good to a degree. And I think transparency is also on a case by case basis. I would say as a media company, we are pretty transparent. Nick's been showing off those revenue reports and everything you were seeing literally.
00:42:40
Speaker
the money coming in and where it is going. Some people have been like, well, I want to see an exact breakdown person by person. And it's like, well, at that point, there's got to be a line for transparency. I'm not sure what your ex returns. Yeah, that's what I like. Well, transparency mirror. Yeah.
00:42:55
Speaker
How much money did you spend a breach? Transparency mirror? That's a window, Martin. That is just a window. Transparency mirror is a window. That is right. That is right. To me, it's from a logistics standpoint, I believe it creates bottlenecking because like...
00:43:12
Speaker
Hey, this one person said, you know, they want this in the game. And I'm not saying, no, let me go check. And it's like, got to find and hunt down five other people. And then they have to have a big meeting over all this kind of stuff. Some things you need to be able to operate on the fly. And some things you just, you're going to have to change them really quickly. And stopping to communicate every point is madness. Imagine every thought you've ever had just being alive tweeted. Some people do that, right? They just look unhinged. So transparency to a certain degree, you know?
00:43:41
Speaker
Not all the time. Nick's not even that bad if we're talking about those people that are just like, man, I hate Stevie Nicks, but this song's pretty all right. I miss her. I want to know what Nick's opinion is on Stevie Nicks. Six minutes, seven minutes, eight minutes.
00:44:02
Speaker
Too much transparency just can invite unneeded outrage as well. Like, you can say, oh, well, we've decided to change this thing. And suddenly, you know, all of Twitter blows up and you get a load of negative press. And I know, you know, no press is bad press, you know, and all that bollocks, but.
00:44:20
Speaker
There's something for holding your cards close to your chest and having a reveal for stuff and, you know, getting people excited, not just through giving them all the information, but just waiting to say things. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's like a silk songs, a good example of that, of where I imagine. Well, first off, that started off what that was going to be DLC or an expansion that grew into a full fledged sequel. And I would imagine Team Cherry
00:44:48
Speaker
regrets showing it so early. I don't know if that's true. What do you do? Yeah, I mean, Todd does probably by showing that logo is probably good for. I mean, it's probably good for the shareholders, right? In the interview, he was like, why did we do that? We weren't even making it because now everyone's talking about it. Yeah, like and nobody, every announcement of any, you know, game showcase, everyone in the chat is like Silksong, Silksong, Silksong.
00:45:17
Speaker
If they had been revealing every single area and showing all the animations of Hornet and all of this, the hype would be nowhere near as big. And yes, there are a lot of negatives to that. It's never going to live up to that hype. Hopefully it does.
00:45:31
Speaker
But that was drummed up because they're showing so little of it, you know? Also, what was it? From a sort of protective standpoint, imagine being like a big brother to your siblings or even your parents. They didn't tell you everything because you're a gamer. You're not a developer. You don't know what these things are like. And not only like go away, you know nothing, but sort of like this is stress you don't understand. And I don't want it on you because like why should that be on you?
00:46:01
Speaker
You know, especially if I'm about to fix it in like 10 minutes. I'm like, oh, hold on, guys. Game's about to like crash completely. I found it. I got a save file. We're good. Yeah. I mean, everyone, everyone who's worked a job, not only in like customer service, but just I feel like literally almost any job is like there's certain parts of your job where it's like, well, the other people who don't work here don't need to know how this works.
00:46:25
Speaker
there's parts of our job where it's like there's behind the scenes stuff on the people like as transparent as we are it's like you don't need to know the you don't need like a minute by minute breakdown of what all of us are doing because you're here for like what the finished products are like and then we show you some of the transparency of like on the road to those finished products and it's the same thing of like I don't know do you need to know what the the inner workings of a hotel are like in order to stay there like no the customer probably doesn't need to know that you can develop more empathy with the people if you do
00:46:53
Speaker
Well, you know, if you've ever worked back of house in a restaurant, you have, you will immediately empathize with any sort of food service place you go to in the rest of your life. Cause you'd be like, Oh, I know what's going on back there. There's, there's a legitimate hell back there. Yep. You're there for the eggs. You don't really care if Mike showed up again after Mike got high. He was bobbing for apples in the fryer again.
00:47:18
Speaker
I was like a nightmare. Race Car Lock with a $5 Dono. Thank you so much, Race Car Lock. In my mind, as a consumer who watches game design stuff, it's like trying to build the Mona Lisa that's also a functional four-door sedan with features. I still think it is literally miracle that any video game gets made. I don't understand it. It just feels like fucking alchemy.
00:47:40
Speaker
Just don't get it. How did things appear on the screen? I was writing a few seconds ago. I press play and now I'll get it back to what you said earlier about, you know, all the games come in and they, there's a message saying, Hey, 10 different things are broken here, but they'll be fixed in a week. And you say, well, why don't you just delay it? Or, you know, how is it like this? It's because games are a miracle. Every game you've ever played is barely holding itself together. And he's going to break at any point every single game.
00:48:09
Speaker
from indie to AAA. Like it's barely functioning. So they break very easily. It is a miracle. It's straight up a miracle. I love when, um, what is it? After a game gets big out of nowhere and then they go like, Oh, I've never coded before. I don't know how. And then an actual developer goes and looks into the files and like, Oh my God, this is just up on rubber bands and duct tape. How did you manage? Like, I forgot what pirate software was talking about. Undertale how he was like, he has.
00:48:36
Speaker
I don't know what a coding is, but essentially it's like he has layers upon layers of so much stuff for dialogue. Yeah. Yeah. It's all useless and checking in on itself over and over again. And he's like, yeah. But it's just a miracle that it came out. I don't know how. Pure chaos. Pure chaos. I also still don't understand how movies work. You just point a camera at a thing and it just fucking captures the image? How does that work? How do photos work? It's all editing.
00:49:06
Speaker
People try to explain to me how it works. I was like, none of that makes sense. None of this makes sense. This is all magic. Beastmarch for the $2 demo. Thank you so much, Beastmarch. Developers owe us the following good games. I don't feel like they owe us good games. They owe us their games. And then we'll see if they're good or not. I don't owe them anything. It's two way. No one owes anyone anything, you know?
00:49:30
Speaker
If any, I haven't seen a dev get uppity and like, you owe me your money. Actually, I did see one. What a prick. Um, I'm not going to call them out cause we don't need that kind of stuff. But at that point, it's like, all right, I'll buy it. And if it's garbage, you give me the money back. This is going to be a two way street here. Yeah. One of those two way mirrors. Uh, I saw, I felt bad for, um, an indie developer who released some game.
00:49:58
Speaker
in the last week. So it's called like potions, some potions, a curious deal. Talked about how they're like, we spent seven years to release their game. They released it, but the day they released it, EA was like, Oh, by the way, a bunch of our old games are on Steam, including it's like dungeon keeper, man and conquer red alert. They should have sent old SimCity games. They dropped like 10 games on Steam and the potions creator was like,
00:50:20
Speaker
The second they did that, all 10 of those games jumped ahead of ours in the, like what's new or what's hot or popular new releases or something. So without those EA games, it would be like number five or number six, but with those EA games, it's like almost below the fold. And so like, that's one of those things that's like, that's a fucking bummer. I don't know what we do with that, you know, because I'm sure there's a lot of people who are like, Oh sick, like these, like Alpha Centauri and SimCity 3000 or $2 on Steam. That's great. And then there's other people. And then I get, but I get where they're coming from of like,
00:50:51
Speaker
We spent seven years of our life and we got fucked over because of this this happens random event, right? Like yeah, it's happened to Titanfall 2 it released in between a call of duty and battlefield one That was their own hubris there yeah, they're like we have the cod boys, but you don't have the cod name
00:51:12
Speaker
yeah it wouldn't have been there to go into publishers it wouldn't have been their decision to release it then it would have been the public the publishers and EA would have decided well we're we are releasing Battlefield 1 which is was massive it was like a huge release
00:51:27
Speaker
And then they were like, I think it was like a week or two weeks later or something, they released Titanfall 2 and it just died. And that being one of the best single player shooter experiences ever made. And an amazing multiplayer and it just got dogged on because it got released then. And I do feel for this indie developer as well, but like, what do you do? Thousands of games are getting released every day, you know, like it's so difficult. You have to just roll the dice if you don't have an insane marketing budget, you know.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, you don't know if you're going to release a game and all of a sudden something like Power World is going to come along and completely, you know.
00:52:01
Speaker
Like eclipse you in terms of eyeballs. So yeah, yeah, it's terrifying Alex Armstrong with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much Nintendo owes us with more legacy content and allowing fan-made content I know Japan's laws differ, but they should be nicer to fans, especially smash fans. So no not smash fans Casey's great. You should be nice to Casey. No other smash fans. They've outlawed the way he plays. Oh
00:52:33
Speaker
do feel, again, without saying they owe us this, I feel like it should be more important for companies with a legacy to honor that legacy and to take care of some of the parts of, some of the steps in curating this art and keeping this art alive and preserving their history. And that's why you get to a certain point and
00:52:53
Speaker
Yeah, no items.
00:52:59
Speaker
That's when I'm like, oh yeah, absolutely take the gloves off, and emulation and piracy is necessary for a game that cannot be legally, easily purchased anymore. Like, if you're gonna abandon your game, then to me, that is putting it in the high seas, and that's where other people need to come in. It's in the trash, it's mine.
00:53:17
Speaker
I mean, a little bit, right? It's that E clear right at the top. It doesn't look dirty. I can have it. No emulating I'm preserving. Exactly. And I get the thing with Yuzu the other week where they had to shut down that extremely popular Switch emulator. And Nintendo was like, oh, millions of people downloaded Tears of the Kingdom before it was released.
00:53:39
Speaker
And part of it was because this emulator is so easy to use. And I think the emulator would have been fine except that they opened a Patreon. And so it was like, hey, pay us to make this thing that is ultimately going to obviously just be used for piracy.
00:53:55
Speaker
So yeah, I don't know. It's a weird thing. I absolutely don't pirate new games. I don't pirate games that are easily accessible on other things. But when I wanted to play Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes, there's no way for me to buy Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes. Download it.
00:54:11
Speaker
That's why cops are coming for me. They're on the way, right? I like my legal copy of PT. Yeah, exactly. I don't even know how to steal PT. If I could. If I could. We mentioned that on the pod with Darren. I was like, it's not OK to steal from people, but some people are holding things that the world needs to have. Yeah, at some point it's just Robin Hood, right? Yeah. Somebody buys the Mona Lisa and just puts it in their basement. Are we justified in stealing it back?
00:54:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jack Manson with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much. They owe us honest advertising and finished games. I think honest advertising. Yeah. The thing is, is any advertising honest? I feel like Bill, yes. I am in a Bill Clinton. What depends on your definition of the word is. You do a good Clinton.
00:55:05
Speaker
He's a sly one, him. But yeah, what is an honest trailer? Yeah. What is a dishonest one? I did research a while ago because there used to be really rough trailers, especially with like Rob Schneider films and all this other kind of stuff. And even a fake critic saying the game is the movies are amazing. Right. And people going, who is this guy? And it turns out Sony just made them up. Right. Yeah. And but they never nothing came out of it because this was a form of freedom of speech.
00:55:34
Speaker
It was an artistic representation of what my hopes and dreams for my own product were, instead of an advertisement for them.
00:55:43
Speaker
So what can you do? And watch it yourself. Don't put it out to the public, you twat. You watch it. You don't make me bite with my own eyes. Yeah, no. So it is, again, it's almost like when I see a game that says early access, I go, this could be absolute cock out. This could be dead after I bought it, but I'm still going in paying for that. With trailers, I go, that could be all lies, like sucker punch.
00:56:07
Speaker
I wanna make a show about this. I feel like I have this sixth sense for being able to watch a trailer and be like, that game's gonna be garbage. And part of that's me studying and making games for so long. But I wanna do a React show where we watch game trailers and we discuss our thoughts on what it's gonna be and where it's at and stuff like that. Because I remember seeing No Man's Sky and everyone getting absolutely
00:56:34
Speaker
So excited for it, and my best mate, or whatever, was like, oh my god, it's going to be so good, I can't wait. And I was like, that game's going to be broken. That's going to be bad. The only game they made beforehand was Joe Danger. And that is not a game with an infinite universe. That is a game where you're a little motorcycle man going left and right. I was like, from the size of the team, the stuff they've said on Conan, whatever they were on, and the trailers, those trailers are not representative of what the game's going to be. And he was like, nah, nah, nah, it's going to be great. It's going to be great. They're doing big things.
00:57:03
Speaker
But then seven years later, the game's kind of beloved. It only took the better part of a decade after release. And they didn't say now, did they? Within my lifetime, if nothing else, your vision within my lifetime. Yeah. There's a little, I don't know, like advertising to me is like.
00:57:24
Speaker
I don't know, there was like, fucking, when I was watching the X-Files, I was on, it was on one of those weird channels. And so the advertising was like really like...
00:57:32
Speaker
some, these are not the ads that are airing during the Super Bowl and during the Oscars. These are like bottom of the barrel ads. And it's like, if Dan Marino comes on and starts talking about these boner pills that help to give them a boner back, I'm not going to be like, damn, that's got to be real. Cause Dan Marino said he got a boner now. Like that's not, does anyone get tricked by, does advertising still work on people? Is anyone like, that's what a McDonald's burger actually looks like. I'm going to go get one. Fucking no, it doesn't obviously. Admittedly it does because whenever like,
00:58:01
Speaker
Whenever I was looking for a car, right? Yeah. I didn't know of any, except for the ads I'd watched. So I was like, how much is a Lincoln? Because I saw Matthew McConaughey cruising down his. Yeah. You know, I think that's a car. Yeah. Yeah. A Nissan Skyline, too fast, too furious, that stuff works. I know the Lexus December to Remember event. Maybe I want to be a part of this December to remember.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, like whenever you're looking for something that's kind of out of your depth, you only remember the ads that you were shown. Yeah. So yeah, it definitely does work.
00:58:33
Speaker
There you go. Dan Marino, help my boner. FoxD, thank you so much for the $5 Dono. I give devs my money to reward them for making something worth my money. Just like the Super Chat, neither they nor you quote owe me anything. That's a great way of looking at it. It's money after the fact. I'm giving you money and then return my investment. You've done something worth the money. Here you go. I don't want it back.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah, because I mean, by giving someone money, you're not guaranteeing you're going to enjoy something. Even if you wait for reviews, and the reviews are all great, and people you know love it, if when you buy a game, there's a chance you're not going to like it. Food. The food's the same thing. Maybe you'll just be like, I don't know if this has cilantro. Shit, I'm one of those 5% of people where it tastes like soap. I am one of those 5% of people. Oh, no, that's trusters.
00:59:19
Speaker
absolute monsters ian alia ian alia alias jesus christ that was a hard one for me to say ian alias ten dollar donor thank you so much ian uh when i saw the title my first thought was about pacific drive and how ironwood put out a news update explaining that uh why they made the safe system the way it is because of intense fan backlash i don't actually know about this one who's got context on it i haven't played it yet yeah pacific drive fan backlash
00:59:50
Speaker
Uh, no fan back. Oh, how do I save the game? Uh, I would like to save my game, but how, if you complete the tutorial, you can save it anytime from the pause menu while in the garage. If you're out on a trip, you'll need to complete your current junction. We go into detail here. Oh, I see. I don't know if it's something that like, um, it was, it was one way at launch. Then Deb's changed it. Cause so many people were complaining that the saves, the save system was kind of strange. Yeah. A big thing with the Rose is, um, um,
01:00:19
Speaker
Can you save mid-run or do you have to do it all in one? Yeah, that's funny because the history behind Roguelikes has always been how to handle the saves, but a lot of people would like to just be saved now and then just come back so I can be exactly where I was, right? But it turns out that's not how it was. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm starting to appreciate that more of being able to just close out mid-run and that's exactly where I'm going to be when I come back.
01:00:44
Speaker
I'm happy to say I'm about 15 hours in the Unicorn Overlord. It's got 100 save files for us. 100! I'm gonna use every one of them! Dude, they're after that second wind score. Oh my god, I love those save files. What was the download size on that thing? It's about to be like a terabyte. Oh my god, it's just gonna be bigger. My switch is just gonna get... I'm gonna have that switch vent smell. Oh yeah.
01:01:08
Speaker
David with a $10 don't know, thank you so much, David. I wonder how much the Helldivers 2 patch was about objective balance versus about encouraging players to abandon their railgun slash shield slash breaker tunnel vision to actually discover overlooked strengths of other stuff. I mean, I also imagine part of it is when a developer spent that much, this game was in development for a long fucking time.
01:01:28
Speaker
And a lot of that time was probably spent in their mind thinking that they had balanced the weapons and that players would, you know, in a perfect world, every weapon is viable. So every weapon is getting equal share and love. And that's how you create this this really deep experience. And so I'm sure they were looking at it and being like, well, shit, people are only using this stuff. So how do we how do we move this stuff? And then like Jay said earlier, it's do you try to raise everything to its level or do you lower it to match the other stuff? And that's.
01:01:55
Speaker
I feel like it's a lose-lose proposition. With some live service games, they'll just churn it. We used to be in a time where they would sort of chase optimal balance in a way. But now...
01:02:12
Speaker
in lieu of more content or whatever, you can kind of just churn it. If they ever go back on their nerves, that's when you start getting this idea of like, oh, you're just cycling. Okay. Yeah. It took me a while after a while and then actually getting in deeper with some live service site development, uh, where it is sort of like, yeah, we just have this three part system of cycling where people feel like, okay, now this changes it up and this changes it up. So we'll see. That's not to say that they're doing it now, but.
01:02:38
Speaker
I think part of that is because it works really well in PvP games, not so much in PvE. PvE needs quite objective balance changes. Whereas PvP, so MOBAs for example, you can have a new character be completely ridiculously balance-wise. One that encourages players to want to play them and get back into the game and be strong.
01:02:58
Speaker
Um, but also by having imbalance on one character in mobas, for example, there are counters to those characters. So that by the fact, it means that the counter to those characters get more play.
01:03:12
Speaker
And by keeping them in balance for a short while it gets more playtime on those which means people then have to counter the counter and then the meta just gets shifted completely because of the imbalance of one character and that can be really healthy for the game and then you bring them down to a normal level and then maybe slightly buff someone else and you completely shift the meta and People love that shit. They say they don't players Say they want full balance, but you would hate the game if it was perfectly balanced
01:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, I don't even know what that would be if it would be perfectly balanced. Tetris. Pong? Pong? No, because, yeah, I guess, good levels. Alex Armstrong, thank you so much for a five dollar dono. Speaking of listening to complaints, remember that controversy when Blizzard removed a pose of Tracer sticking her bum out because one guy complained.
01:04:04
Speaker
That's what I mean by bad at wording, but they feel their feels, right? What they were getting at sort of is that it was just out of character, right? It's like with everything else that you've provided so far, this just seems so out of nowhere. I don't know. Maybe she's a little thoughtie on the side. Yeah. Who's to say? Are you really owed that sort of consistency? You know, she could be super wholesome and great, but shows her butt every now and again. Why not? You know, don't be a prude. But.
01:04:29
Speaker
Blizzard went, you know what? You're right. Let's go for it. But I feel like Blizzard in general is very community serving, and part of that is why some of their player base feels they're owed so much. Yeah, why you get the... Remember when Diablo Immortal was revealed and the guy at BlizzCon went up and said, is this a joke? That's sort of like...
01:04:51
Speaker
You sort of empower that kind of... Yeah, like I worked at this food line. It's kind of like an Aldi's and basically they were saying, we can't compete with Walmart's pricing. So you guys have to be nice. We have more hospitality here than Walmart, but they have way better prices and that's kind of blizzard. Their games aren't the best, but they've got the polish, they've got the community side of things and they always try to put in their player feedback. So whose fault is it then? That's just their reputation. I think it's society's fault. I'm just going to blame society on this one.
01:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, let me show a little tushy whenever. Little tushy for the pushy! Robonob the snob, with a 20 euro dono. Holy smokes, that's European money. All they owe us is artistic integrity. If they had an idea for, I don't know, the story, and then change it because of public backlash, they're admitting they don't trust or care about their own creation, i.e. Mass Effect... F-O-3? Fallout 3?
01:05:45
Speaker
I know the Mass Effect thing is obviously the Mass Effect 3. Didn't they tweak some ending stuff because people were mad? Oh, that's right. They did, didn't they? They went back on some of their decisions in the epilogue DLC. I don't remember Fallout 3. I don't remember exactly what the deal with that was, if that was just...
01:06:12
Speaker
them changing on user feedback. But I think, yeah, I mean, that's the problem is like, where does, uh, where does that line exist between like, Oh, these are all good changes. These are all good changes. No, no, no. That's a bad change. And ultimately that's probably where everyone's like, well, my ideas are the good ideas you should change. But then it was not one of my ideas. That's not one of the good ones. Don't know wedding there. Cause like,
01:06:34
Speaker
Who was it? Last of Us 2? They stuck to their creative integrity. And then look what happened. Yeah, yeah. Look at that. What can you do there? Okay, the tweet the ending of Fallout 3 to where you can save yourself and Sarah Lyons. Shout out to Sarah Lyons. I don't know who that is, but I like that name. Sarah Lyons. I just don't like the wishy-washiness. Like, if you have a bad ending, so be it. If you're gonna keep on, like, oh, I actually meant this ending. No, I actually meant this ending. I'm tuning out. Yeah.
01:06:59
Speaker
I don't know, that all feels like some Snyder Cut bullshit there, where it's like, but this was, here's the movie, but I got this other version for you, so you can't be mad at me. Don't worry, Rebel Moon is coming out, but we have the full Rebel Moon coming. It's like, what do we do? Make it fair. What is this? The only cool time that this was done was with Clue, because it was a cinematic release, and they had three different endings, and you never knew what you got. So you'd be talking to your friend, and you'd be like, what are you talking about? No, the murderer was this person, not this person, which I think is great.
01:07:27
Speaker
No. We need more of that. We need more endings. Games need to have a bunch of different endings we don't even realize and so we can all just argue with each other. I'm not big and near. That's just near. That is just near. But we don't know. Like, we should get to the end of a game we don't realize has multiple endings and then the two of us start arguing because you're like, that's not what happened at the end. Who's to say every game doesn't have that? Fucking take a little bong grip.
01:07:49
Speaker
Big ol' bong grip. FoxD with a $5 dono, thank you so much FoxD, quote, from and by the community, end quote, is how every indie craft them up turns into either Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, its lowest common denominator design. Yeah, that is a big, I always cheer on the little guy, but some, some indies do go in with a sort of like, here, I did this for you, you owe me, I'm owed something, you know? That was kind of the wrong attitude to come in with, unfortunately.
01:08:18
Speaker
Yeah. Just make your silly games, you know? Make them silly. Make them you. They do need to make them more silly. That's all you can ever be in this life, is you. There's a lack of silliness. Alex Armstrong with the $2 don't know. Thank you so much. How about Sega owing us more good Sonic games? They don't, because the last one they released, well, not the last one, the one before it. Sonic for the Tears was great.
01:08:42
Speaker
They'd have to release a good Sonic game first. Sonic Frontiers was great. We all agree
Nostalgia and Personal Experiences in Gaming
01:08:47
Speaker
about it. All of us are like, man, Sonic Frontiers was so neat. Remember when he went through all those sad lands? Did the ring thing where he dropped his pocket change? Yeah, love it. Love it when he drops his pocket change. That's all I ask. That's all I ask. A lot of room to run and coins falling out of me. Yeah, exactly.
01:09:05
Speaker
Uh, room to run and coins falling on me. Uh, Jaraijin, uh, thank you so much for being in the green gang. I'd argue games are even beyond art. It's great. Beyond art.
01:09:21
Speaker
beyond the vegan alternative to art. Oh my God. Because of the interactive nature and how it involves like Ludic play and how it's a personal experience. I think it's just hard. We don't need to put it above or below my films and my TV programs. Well, as a game designer, I'm all for putting it above TV and film, you know, let's go. Give us credit.
01:09:46
Speaker
Movies rule, games rule. Even Kojima doesn't play that much. So I don't know. I think he's ruled. I cannot imagine Kojima playing a video game. I can't either. Not normally. I don't know. I wonder what the last game he's played is. Because we know what the last 10,000 movies he's seen is. He loves Inside. He thinks it's the most game.
01:10:06
Speaker
because it's the most game. And Remeraldee, with a $10 don't know, thank you so much. Oh, Mr. Emerald, probably. Remeraldee. He should have been capitalized. Remeraldee. Wanted to leave a little thank you, Marty. No idea why, but hearing his writing and presentation on his Dark Souls II review back in the day when I was 13 inspired me to write, which is actually
01:10:40
Speaker
That might be, that is literally 10 years ago to the day. That is March 11th, 2014. I was like, man, this is like, yeah. Cause this is HBD Dark Souls, uh, Dark Souls two is this week. And so yeah, 10 years ago today, review Dark Souls two nine out of 10, get fucked to everyone. I probably was, that was probably a little too high if I'm being honest. Yeah, you probably should. Absolutely. Yeah. Just like a seven. Yeah. Probably not any better than a seven. Eight is great.
01:10:56
Speaker
Now, my job. Mr. Emerald, that is incredible. Thank you so much. Man, my dark soul's too red. That might be...
01:11:09
Speaker
Seven is I was good. Listen, I beat Dark Souls 2 fucking pre-release no help. I didn't know what was going on that game Let me tell you that was a hectic time It's wild west you're like what is happening here? Yeah
01:11:23
Speaker
Thank you so much, Mr. Emerald. Matthew C. Snow, fornin' and I don't know, thank you so much. I do believe that there's often an issue of a vocal minority, probably the biggest example is Overwatch doing big changes because of the eSports. That's another big thing, is do you cater to the competitive, or do you like cater to the, you know, to the casuals?
01:11:43
Speaker
It's iffy when you add money, right? When there's money involved in stakes and there's imbalance, the pros do kind of have a warranted in saying, hey, these things are in balance. It's ruining the sport, right? And they do arguably somehow know the games better than the devs in some cases, right?
01:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, well, it doesn't mean those changes need to be made because a lot of the times when you buff stuff for pros, it will make the game a lot worse for casuals because it can be abused by, you know, the casuals, but the pros, it can't all vice versa. You know, I'm sure you've seen loads of this for us.
01:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But I was thinking, I just, if Nintendo showed us anything as a casuals first, competitive is inevitable, you know? It's competitive will follow. Yeah, they will follow. If they've got the competitive spirit in them, they'll be there. Even if you're trying to sue them, even if you don't want them there, they will show up. Whereas other games go for esports first and they just die because it's not fun to play.
01:12:45
Speaker
You know what's weird? Speaking of Nintendo and competitive, obviously you've seen competitive Smash, you've seen competitive Splatoon, speedrunning games. I've never seen competitive Mario Kart. I mean, I know, Jay, you just did that video, it's because that game is like bullshit, but like...
01:13:02
Speaker
it's like one of the most popular games ever like I've never seen both ways you can abuse the absolute living hell out of that game you know like sandbagging which has been nerfed so that's a interesting thing chat if you don't know what sandbagging is it's when you deliberately hang back in the I think it's the lower three positions
01:13:21
Speaker
to guarantee two extremely powerful items and then you use them at the beginning of the last lap which propels you to first place because your driving skill is actually really good you're not actually a player who's going to be in last place and you basically automatically win because the game gets you to that point so I think a lot of times the game isn't playable in the competitive setting if there are things like that you know because not everyone can do it yeah but like
01:13:47
Speaker
There's clearly, like when we, like when I was playing during that launch, the second win launch stream we had, I think you guys were playing like, what's the secret spy game? Well, someone's a robot.
01:14:00
Speaker
Oh yeah. First class trouble. I was playing some, uh, some cart on the side and I just, whoever we were playing with folks in community, there was like one or two people who were clearly better than everyone else. And so it's one of those things where like, it's not all random, right? Like it's definitely skill. It's like, yeah, there's definitely skill. I just want to see 12, like really good people going at it.
01:14:24
Speaker
Give me 12 dudes in a room going at it. That's all I want. Theirs is more exciting because they know all the skips, like where all the all the crazy edges and the bounces. Yeah, like I like to consider myself a relatively good Mario Kart player. I have three stars on every single cup, on every single difficulty. I know like that game. But there are elements where like when you're playing at the highest difficulty,
01:14:49
Speaker
There can be scenarios where the AI, like I spoke about in my video, can just gigafuck you and there's nothing you can do because the rules of that game, the rules of engagement are flawed. I mean, that creates fun for the casuals, right? You can make like a shitty Casey mode and just turn off items, right?
01:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, you can, but looking down into the mechanics of Mario Kart, the shitty Casey mode isn't that fun because it's not that deep. No fun for
Developers vs. Publishers: Roles and Constraints
01:15:17
Speaker
me. That's why you have to keep it separate. Don't integrate the two. That was a big issue with a lot of games I find. Let there be a way to sterilize the game for people who like that kind of stuff. Don't make it sterilize for everyone. Sure, sure.
01:15:32
Speaker
Shout out to Goofy, one of the greatest characters in Kingdom Hearts history. Dr. Calcs, with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much, Dr. Calcs. It's important to distinguish publishers from developers. Devs hands are tied, especially with publicly traded publishers. Yeah, completely agree. That's why it feels like, like most things in life, it feels like the people with money
01:15:51
Speaker
looking down at the people without money and being like how do we get them to fight amongst themselves so that they forget that the people with money are really the people who are probably the roots of most problems in life and so let's just get all the pores to fight each other and get angry at each other while meanwhile we're the ones making them poor Taylor's oldest time
01:16:06
Speaker
I, some devs do get into their own head with like public expectation. It's a weird head space to be in. He's like, imagine a publisher telling you this is what'll make your game work. You're trying to listen to as many people as possible saying, oh, this is why I love these other games. And then you just made this Frankenstein, but he's like five foot two. No one wants to talk to him.
01:16:25
Speaker
I love Frankenstein. I think Andy Frankenstein's great. Any story that's a Frankenstein story, I'm going to watch it. Poor things. It's just like Frankenstein with boning. It's great. Oh. I highly recommend it. Oscar winner. Doran Grossman Naples with a $10 don't know. Thank you so much. The devs own the game they make and I own the game I buy. What happens in between? I don't know. Do you own the games you buy?
01:16:49
Speaker
on steam you don't on anything digital you don't own it if you read that terms of service it's not yours you're paying for the right to access it at that one time they can take it away at any point yeah they go amusement park and maybe the tilt the world goes away one day yeah
01:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's also, there's the, you know, the thing that's where you don't, an artist who creates art and puts it out in the world, it's no longer theirs, right? That it's the art then belongs to the masses, belongs to the people. I'd like that in like a, that's nice in like a kind of a philosophical sense. That's obviously not how actual monetary ownership works, but
01:17:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think the digital ownership thing is definitely, that's a whole other bag of worms that I'm sure is going to become bigger and bigger as we're slowly moving towards a more and more digital future. Terrified. Yeah. Jacob Kitty with a $5 don't know, thank you so much Jacob. On games being art, I think they can be, but aren't inherently. Anything derived from creativity is art, so live service or gotcha, for instance, art.
01:17:56
Speaker
But I mean, even live service and gacha games, there is artistry in Destiny. There is artistry in Genshin Impact. There is artistry in Marvel Snap. Certain elements might be for commerce, but so is product placement in a movie. If a character cracks open a can of Pepsi in a movie, does it immediately become not art?
01:18:20
Speaker
you know it does define art right that's the the root of the problem is define what art is for me this might be wrong but it's anything that anything that is designed to make you feel an emotion that anger you know fear bliss whatever right so a gacha a gacha game is designed to make you feel
01:18:44
Speaker
Um, exhilarated and happy when you finally get that, um, you know, that role, that waifu, right? Do I agree that they're, they're well-designed and they're, they're good for people to play? Not really, but they are trying to make you feel something and they do make a lot of people feel happiness, you know, even though they're bleeding them drive their credit card money, but so is it art? It's, yeah, it's such a tough question. Yeah. Are you standing there for us?
01:19:15
Speaker
Do you think live service games are art or do you think that once it becomes about the money that it stops being art? It's performance art in the way that like, you know, a live game of charades, improv, all that. This is a different kind of art.
The Role of Player Feedback in Game Development
01:19:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:30
Speaker
in the same way that like, I mean, you're talking to me, I find food can be art, you know, all these kinds of disciplines, all these kinds of ways that you are trying to get people to feel things or empathize with something or just get immersed. I think so. But it's just, games are so weird because they just, they exist in such an odd space between like, it is traditional art, it is a product, it can, um,
01:19:53
Speaker
What is artistic and what is actually just psychological hijacking of the brain, right? Is that right there? So I'm like, what can I do? It's hard. It's difficult.
01:20:04
Speaker
James Degen with a £5 don't know, thank you so much, James. IndieDev here, I don't think that an artist owes an audience, but it does pay to listen to their issues, not solutions, as they are rarely well informed. I completely agree with that. Yeah, well done. Then creating a wall around yourself and just going, no, no, no, no, I don't want to hear it, isn't awaited. We've seen those successes of
01:20:26
Speaker
That's part of the appeal of early access, right? Is being able to bring in that feedback. The reason Hades was released in 1.0 in a state where it won a bunch of Godis is because it had time to cook in early access and Supergiant had time to listen to feedback, incorporate the stuff that they thought would be good for the game and filter out the stuff that they thought would be bad.
01:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's free play testing, right? Yeah. Like when you release your game, it's free play testing. The audience is going to tell you what they think. And when you play test the game in development, you know, whatever stage you're at, you'll have people, even if they're working in QA who kind of misinformed and the feedback they're giving is just kind of wrong. But it pays to listen to it because it might inform you of some flaws that you don't see because Frost said it at the beginning, developers historically get stuck in their own heads.
01:21:17
Speaker
because they're artists, they get obsessed with it, and they stop seeing the positives, and they stop seeing the negatives, right? And you need other people's eyes to point you in the right direction. It doesn't always mean they're right. Especially if you've been on a project for half a decade, the better part of a decade, like, it isn't, like, the health average is a great example. I'm sure within the first 48 hours, they probably had more, quote unquote, play test hours logged in than in the entirety of development, just by virtue of a game that sells 100,000, a million copies, like,
01:21:46
Speaker
Just by virtue of those numbers, like you can't pay for that kind of play testing beforehand. They stress test the service form. James Degen. Oh, James, I already read yours. I fucked up. I'm sorry, James. You're great. Robonob back with a 599 Euro don't know. Thank you so much. By the way, thanks for not calling this quote. What do publishers OS end quote, or I'd be burning through my salary on super chats right now. Oh my God. We need to change the title. Let's do another one next week. Robonob is going to empty the 401k. We're just going to have everything.
01:22:16
Speaker
uh early berm with a $20 don't know thank you so much hey ludo's dad realistically speaking i want a new dynasty warriors like the old ones from ps2 the new releases are buggy lazy messes and have been for years can we kick start this kind of thing i mean yeah we can
01:22:36
Speaker
Does anyone else make moosos? Or is like, moosa is just one company make all the moosos. Is it Koei? The Zelda one. Yeah, but I think it's just like, those are all like by the same folks. Like Zelda, the Persona one. I think it's Koei. Maybe there's some weird pattern they've got on some mechanical stuff. And that's like, as soon as you have a hundred dudes on your screen, that's hard. You can't have more than a hundred dudes.
01:22:59
Speaker
So, what was it? What's that one with the zombies in the mall? What you running them over with? Dead Rising. Yeah, that's a mall so. James Degen back again with a 10 pound dono. Thank you so much, James. Folks said to remove my core mechanic, a rear view mirror in a first person shooter because they didn't get it. But when folks play it, they end up digging it. It's called Hell Screen, by the way. Would love for you guys to check it out.
01:23:26
Speaker
I feel like I've seen this. This looks sick as hell, number one. I've seen this game before, because I've seen the Reaver Mirror thing, and I remember my first response being, hell yeah, that's cool. That's cool as hell. Yeah. Yeah, Eric, if you want a trailer and put it up on screen, I'd love to see some stuff. Yeah, hell screen. This is a good hidden gem, candidate. Well, I'll tell, this seems like a Jesse game.
01:23:52
Speaker
I'm not trying to pigeonhole Jesse Galina, but he likes these crunchy shooters with the cool colors
01:24:01
Speaker
You get feedback from, like, some feedback is just, I don't want anything of what this game is. I forgot who it was. One dev had just finished making their shooting game and people were constantly giving him feedback to make it more like COD and less like whatever it was, right? They'll just, people just want more of what they already know. They don't know the terminology. They don't know. They will never give suggestions to like really move a medium forward or to do something groundbreaking because all they'll be like is like, well, I want it to be like this other thing I like. That's not how anything works.
01:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, I just want more. Yeah. Thank you so much, James. Also, James, hit me up with a code so we can get an error card. Yeah, James, this looks awesome. I want to play this. Hit us on Discord. DM us on Discord. Search on. Humane Shield with a 4.99. I don't know. Thank you so much. Humane Shield. The one Bungie mechanic I like was if you beat Halo on hardcore, you got a special ending. I never did it, but it was a nice bonus for players.
01:24:56
Speaker
I don't mind that. I don't mind having like, not like the quote unquote true ending, but like give a little prize for people who are real fucked up. The one sick in the head. If we're going to go through that whole thing on a crazy mode. If you could do like a no death run of like ungrounded mode or whatever of the last of us, give them a little something at the end. And it can be as simple as a an achievement, right? They're not to be big. I remember by accident completing Bioshock 2 without dying.
01:25:24
Speaker
And I got an achievement at the end and it was like, it's called like brass balls or something. And I got this year, I was all sat and it was like complete the game without dying. And I was like.
01:25:32
Speaker
I'm a god, right, and it's just that one achievement. Like, it was probably, I was probably playing on easy, right? I didn't know it was coming, and it made me feel great, and I still remember it to this day because of that, right? Yeah, even when you're not having a good time, I was playing the card on veteran, and I was just, oh, they just slam your ass in the first mission, and immediately, within five minutes, here's an achievement for dying 15 times in a row. Well, yeah, cool. Yeah, thank you, I think. I think, I think the proper donkey was for me. Yeah.
01:26:02
Speaker
Ah, tsunami doucher with a $28 dono, thank you so much. Remember when the first HiFi Rush trailer had the tags from the creator of Okami and Evil Within? That's why I think a dev owes us games that are proud enough that they will use them as pedigrees to push future projects.
01:26:19
Speaker
That sounds like must have 10 years of experience and be 9 years old. Yeah, I mean that can work when you're Shinji Mikami who's been making bangers and started a studio since the 90s. But if you're a dev who doesn't have those, that doesn't mean your game's going to be bad.
01:26:35
Speaker
A lot of times, devs come out of nowhere, and you're like, what the fuck would Undertale have before, or Stardew Valley? But also, if I may be mean, some demos during the next fest, they would say, from the creator of Blah Blah Blah Blah, and I go look at those games, I'm like, those are ass. I would not say. That's what you know what that is. Yeah, you can't. I was like, I would not just claim, no, this is not my son. He looks nothing like me. Be very careful whenever you say, here's my pedigree.
01:27:01
Speaker
it's art again right like you would go to the gallery to see the new pieces from an artist you enjoy and you haven't seen the art before you go to the gallery but you know you know what kind to expect from that from that description so you go in and it might not be to your taste but you know it's in my piece it's a complete
01:27:20
Speaker
But it's like getting to someone's third album, right? And before you listen to it, it's like from the creators of the last two, and you listen to like 12 songs and they're horrible. By now you're thinking, you know what? The odds are against you, my friend. You were better off not saying anything. Change your name. Change your band name. At this point, it's just really something to remember. You were better off not saying that you were the creator of anything.
01:27:40
Speaker
There was also that game, Children of the Sun, the devolver game that had a demo at, I guess that was a cool sniper one, really cool. We wanted to stand out demos at Next Fest, I thought. The game was announced, it had a demo, and I'm like, shit, this is on my radar. This is one of my most anticipated indies. The trailer prominently says, I believe it's a solo dev, and it's from the mind of, I think, Rene Rothier.
01:28:06
Speaker
And I was like, Oh, who's that? And I googled it and I just don't, there's just nothing on, I don't know who this person is. Like they, it's not like it's from blank who made inside or it's like blank who worked on this game. I googled it and it's not that I'm not familiar with their games. I just literally cannot find what else they've worked on.
01:28:27
Speaker
shouted out because my god they do so much but there seems to be this like it is an advertisement to say this is made by one person so when they see you think it's more of that it's less about the person and more of like getting eyes on like oh shit this is a solo dev this is one person yeah also like if you don't like it it's their fault not mine
01:28:45
Speaker
Well, and it's one of those, I'm totally like, I would, especially solo devs, like I want to know the names of more people who make the games I play. I think that's important. Like understand the artists behind the art. Um, it was just one of those where I was like, oh, this is a weird, like.
01:29:00
Speaker
you know, marketing move when I don't know who this person is. It's not like being like from the mind of Steven Spielberg. I was like, I just don't know who this is.
Defining Art in Gaming
01:29:08
Speaker
I mean, that's confidence right there. People are going to know your name. They're going to want to keep that name. They also just kind of fit the aesthetic, you know? Yeah. No, it was a great trailer. I loved like my thing was less a, uh, uh,
01:29:25
Speaker
You shouldn't do this and more of, I was just kind of confused. That's why the game looks fucking cool though. One person made that. Hell yeah. Uh, Alex Armstrong, $2 don't know. Thank you so much. Uh, devs and publishers aren't evil 24 seven. That's only CEOs agreed. Agreed. Even when they sleep, uh, Fox D with a $2 don't know. Thank you so much. Give me Doug Cockle reading a terms of service in Geralt's voice.
01:29:52
Speaker
See, I feel like we'd all sit through them. If we could listen to our favorite characters, do them. Well, maybe that's your, that's your side gig. Start reading terms of services, release your own DLC for games to where it could be the frost cut. I'll get sued too.
01:30:11
Speaker
Just don't do a Nintendo game and you'll be fine. And so Frost doesn't need to do this, guys. Make sure to check us out on Patreon with other fans on there. Robonob the snob. Thank you so much for a $5.99 euro. Don't know. You know what we're owed? A Deadly Premonition remake followed by James making a two hour essay on it. Have you ever played Deadly Premonition?
01:30:32
Speaker
No, I have not. I haven't, but I love Beyond Good and Evil, which is basically like a photographer-like. So I should probably... Deadly Premonition is the one where you take pictures of ghosts, right? No, that's Fatal Frame. No, no, no, that's Fatal Frame. Deadly Premonition is like...
01:30:51
Speaker
the sweary one it's like heavily inspired by Twin Peaks but the game is like janky and shitty as hell okay no i was thinking of a different game yeah no i still haven't played that um but i'm a big fan of Twin Peaks so maybe i should check it out and yeah i'll make a two hour video essay on it there you go what's happening
01:31:07
Speaker
SVS Guru with a five-year-old don't know. Thank you so much, SVS Guru. I think there's a line between games that are art and games that are product that contain art. Just Saunt on one end and Suicide Squad on the other. I don't think, I think that's just, that's a game that's good and a game that's not good. I think that's like a thing, but I don't know. I don't care for this, like...
01:31:30
Speaker
If we're going to say that all games are art, there is bad art, like normal art. But that's the problem. Art is not a good or a bad. We're giving no baggage to the word art other than it is what it is. Yeah, except people keep on trying to put this like, oh, at this point, it's just this drivel. And at this point, it's caca. It's like, no, it's all art. And like traditional art, I don't really care for a lot of it. Yeah.
01:31:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Killers of the Flower Moon and Zone of Interest are art as much as Transformers, Rise of the Beasts, and Madam Web.
01:32:03
Speaker
Two of those movies are really, well, three of those movies are pretty good. Transformers Rise of the Beast was actually pretty good. Shout out to the beasts. Robonob, back with another 5.99 euro. Don't know, thank you, Robonob. Disagree with SVS Guru regarding mass-produced mainstream art is still art. Transformers, Transformers taking a lot of shots right now. Transformers movies don't stop being movies, a form of art, because they suck. Hey, Rise of the Beast doesn't suck. Take it back. Yeah, I agree with that.
01:32:30
Speaker
I don't think art makes something good or bad, it's just us saying what the thing is.
01:32:37
Speaker
Jewel row with a two euro don't know. Thank you so much. I just wanted a new American McGee Alice game And then EA gave us all the other games instead. Yeah Talk about art. Sure. You still download that on EA game pass. Okay, I'm on my Xbox 360. Okay. Yeah 360 you can like play it on a modern Xbox. I know I have it down. Well, I have it on my screen I don't know if I can actually play it but it's button is there
01:33:06
Speaker
Andre, thank you so much for the dono. The problem with Yuzu is that the devs used stolen pirate content to develop the emulator, which is a big no-no when developing an emulator legally. I don't even know how you would make an emulator. Again, we talked about it. I don't understand how things work. I definitely don't understand how emulators work. I have more confidence that I could program a toaster before an emulator.
01:33:27
Speaker
It's all French to me. Gildan with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much. Gildan, the dollar per hour measure doesn't give its worth, and it's hard to review long games, but it's practical looking at a massive steam backlog. I mean, I will definitely, if I'm choosing what to play next, I will be like, if I can jam through a couple shorties this week, I'll choose those. I'll choose those. Yeah. It's all again. Yeah.
01:33:56
Speaker
again we're back we're back with our baby it's not again but katana zero i want an extremely short game but that game has had an unbelievably lasting impact on me i think it was worth every penny some people would think it it wasn't yeah some people when they go to look at art would say well this wasn't worth the price of admission some people that changes their life you know we uh last week for hidden gems uh uh jess and i played through abzu
01:34:22
Speaker
And it started Abzu, and then an hour and 30 minutes later, we're done. And I was like, stream's not even over yet. I would recommend Abzu 100 out of 100 times. It was a great 90 minute little swim around, a little fuck about with people. It being 90 minutes to me isn't a detriment. That's a positive to me. It's like a single sitter. I love a single sitter.
01:34:44
Speaker
Yep, high replayability, small rounds, Bellatro, like 30 minutes at most. Yeah, yeah. It's weird that I wouldn't put myself, like it's hard to put myself through Yakuza and God of War, but I just slammed 100 hours on a card game over and over.
01:35:00
Speaker
And that's the thing, as much as I like those shorter games, I just put 100 hours in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I think I'm at across the 80 hour mark in Persona 3, I've already put 15 in Unicron Overload, I feel like I'm going to keep going, so everything has its place. Nothing has to be, everything should just be the length it should be.
01:35:22
Speaker
Billie Zane, Titanic. Alex Armstrong, thank you so much for a $5 don't know. You say that about legacy content and piracy, Marty, but do you know those really orthodox fans who tell you to buy all the old stuff on eBay still exist, right? Yeah, those people have like head injuries. Look, I do love...
01:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, but that's one of those things where like I do I like I've gotten back into like I'm like gearing up my dreamcast Library and I bought some fucking ps2 and ps3 games this weekend And
Game Mechanics and Player Perception
01:35:53
Speaker
I like it But like I don't know at a certain point like if it's an ethical thing It's like well, it's not ethical you just give me money to a dude on eBay like the creator doesn't get any of that money You're buying a game use like ethics kind of go out the window there at that point, right? I
01:36:08
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe? I don't know. Who knows about ethics? I'm not an ethicist.
01:36:13
Speaker
That's a real job, right? Ethicists. Yes. Ethicists. They put jelly in the donut. Yeah, they put jelly in the donut. Exactly. I tore. Thank you so much for the donut. Hey guys, just caught the stream late because of work, but I wanted to congratulate Frost and Jamaite for the insightful and thoroughly entertaining work on Cold Take and Design Delve. Ludo for being the strongest and cutest doggo and Marty for avoiding prison with Yuji Naka. Look at us.
01:36:39
Speaker
Who says I've avoided prison? Maybe that broken door is just a, it's the wall door I share with Yuji Naka. It's the rest of your cell, yeah. Yeah, exactly. For Yuji Naka. Hashtag for Yuji Naka. And thank you so much. That was a very, very, very kind word. It was a lovely comment. Thank you so much.
01:36:55
Speaker
Lady luminous been a member for two months using the green comment to say a placebo Balancing does that mean a lot of balancing is an illusion. Oh balancing is an illusion to a player Thanks for all the work you're doing with second one with placebo balancing. Yeah, I mean do we Perception is stronger than reality as far as games go I've said yes in many many devs say that words just you got to make them feel like it's balanced because in the end you can't teach them that before I was in that space I was a big
01:37:25
Speaker
theory crafted for the game and I constantly would make this like, this is actually the most broken thing and pros and a bunch of the casual audience would be like, you have a head injury, what are you doing? And then it would be the most busted thing by the end of it. And it was, and I got to exploit it the entire time because it wasn't a problem. That's the thing, if it's, there's a lot of things in games actually that you feel aren't broken and they well are, but since no one's complaining, they won't address it because it is as much perception as it is actually trying to be balanced.
01:37:55
Speaker
Well said. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, I don't know. Like I made Mario Curry, you know, it's not balanced at all. People like it. Yeah. Yeah. The perception thing is it's you want to get to a point where your player is playing the game.
01:38:15
Speaker
So with a weapon, say it's horrifically overpowered, you know, if the player had found that gun early and that is their baseline experience, they will not feel as if the gun is overpowered because they don't have context. So and this can go for like playing different characters in, you know, mobas and competitive games and stuff like that. You need context. And so.
01:38:39
Speaker
that then bleeds into the bouncing patch. You're seeing that your favorite character is getting nerfed by 10% damage wise means nothing to you unless you have context for the rest of the characters or like how it actually functions. And this is one of the reasons why I think like putting direct numbers into your game is really dangerous because players can measure that shit and as fun as that is for the 10% of people who do want to measure how much damage they're exactly doing.
01:39:07
Speaker
You get scrutinized heavily and, you know, oh, God, just talking about WOW again. WOW's famous for this. You can see the damage numbers of every single person you're playing with. If you get add-ons and, you know, you can directly see it. And I think that has a lot of toxicity. It allows lots of toxicity towards the devs for not balancing things perfectly. You know, I think in a lot of ways, like with Final Fantasy 14, they don't have damage numbers or they don't allow add-ons for that. And their community is probably a lot happier for it.
01:39:36
Speaker
say. Yeah. And I mean, with the placebo effect thing, you have to take into account that so much of games are can mirrors like our magic trick. Oh, yeah. You know, there was that story that blew up a year or two ago about the
01:39:50
Speaker
I think the guy from Bioware was like, oh yeah, to make the horse feel fast in Dragon Age, we just added speed lines. When you were on the horse, you weren't moving any faster. But you thought you were. And no one complained. No one was ever like, wait a minute. I'm not moving any faster on a horse. But
Impact of Game Length and Adaptation Challenges
01:40:05
Speaker
you thought you were. And ultimately, if these things are magic tricks, and you believe it, that isn't that the important thing? Yeah.
01:40:12
Speaker
Yeah. Play games with your heart, not with your brain. Don't do that either. Probably use both. Alex Armstrong with a two dollar don't know. Thank you so much. Alex, you Suzuki owes us an end to Shenmue. After playing Shenmue 3, I will just politely decline. We don't need Shenmue.
01:40:30
Speaker
I think we're fine. Shenmue1 can just exist in my heart and I'll be fine. JewelRao with a five-year-old. No, no, thank you so much, Jewel. I want Marty's reviews to always contain the number of save slots, how many unicorns there are in Overlord as well. Shout out to Bellatro also. I am weak now. Oh, no. You've been Bellatro-pilled. Let's measure games by save slots, eh?
01:40:54
Speaker
Unicorn overload or overlord the hundred blood for three. Yeah Yeah, fucking elven ring one get the fuck out of here elven. No, I can roll a new character Yeah, you get new characters last guardians one last guardian only has continue or start over damn So let's go in a lot of those like cinematic games only have one the fuck get the fuck out of here Fumito oh wait Give me a hundred safe the second game. I'm working on I can't talk about because it's under NDA but
01:41:23
Speaker
It does not have saves. There's a hint for what it is, but I will make sure that there is a secret save location. My, and I will have infinite saves. I love it. I love it. I love it. Beautiful high second wind score. Yeah. 10 out of 10. Poor, poor hard drive. If you, if you access that screen, your computer explodes.
01:41:47
Speaker
Also bring back the cool little save icons like ps1 and ps2 used to have when you'd save a game Like each would have it's like cool little animated animated thing. Yeah And I love like looking at my memory card and being like, oh it's like a say follower and Steve and seeing all the little characters about
01:42:04
Speaker
It's great. And Urbanum, thank you so much for the 25 Zwoti. Great discussion. Seems like I owe you one. Urbanum, thank you so much. No one owes us anything. Listen, we appreciate the donos. We appreciate the support. But honestly, you just being here and hanging out means the world to us. However, the money is also good because that allows us to eat and plan picnics. I've been told food is good.
01:42:27
Speaker
Oh, food's great. Man, there's some of it that's so good. It's wild. Eat it every day. Yeah. Yeah. You ever have a Calzone? It's like a pizza if someone just fucking rolled that fucker up. Holy shit. I'm coming to America, boys. I'll put it up on itself. Oh my god. Calzone. Sky Captain with a file or don't know, thank you so much. Sky Captain, I found destiny changed too often for me and my friends to play. Every week we had to grind to get back to where we were, so we just stopped playing.
01:42:53
Speaker
And then on to Helldivers 2. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing is that's a, you know, that's, it's a two way street where it's like, they make the changes and then you can vote. Not even with your wallet, but like with your time to be like, all right, these changes are too much for us. It's an interesting thought experiment, right? Like what are players engaging with more? If you compare Destiny and Helldivers, are they engaging more with changing their characters or their characters having an effect on the world? Which gives them things like what? Yeah. What's more engaging?
01:43:23
Speaker
At that point, the onus is on the player to decide whether they are the target demographic, because these games are just rolling. They're going to keep going. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, Quindo1 with a five dollar don't know. Thank you so much. Gamers can be very fickle. I quit Fallout 4 because I went to the primary DJ in the game and he gave me no quests. It was the last straw for me. To be fair, if you have a DJ in your game and he's not going to give me a quest, get the fuck out of here. Just get the fuck out of here. Why are you even making art? That's not art.
01:43:54
Speaker
What's the last senseless rage quit from you? That's the line. Oh my god, senseless rage quit. As far as like just games, because I think it's good to acknowledge that we are irrational beings. Everyone's got it in them. No one is very rational. Spoke about it last week, unskippable cutscene at the beginning of the game. Alt-F4.
01:44:14
Speaker
Oh, God, yeah, me, if I'm not wearing the review hat, if you have too much exposition at the start, I was like, I'm done. I don't know. I wanted a game, and I had to read. You're right back. Fuck this. I'm playing the lecture. Yeah, I know, genuinely. Especially, it's like, what is your game? Like, I was noticing, I was enjoying the gameplay of Berserk Boy, and there was just a lot of talking. I'm like, what are we doing? Like, I don't need Berserk Boy lore. I'm trying to go Berserk. I'm trying to go Berserk. I'm trying to be a Berserk boy. That's some sort of a fucking studio, Sam. Not a book boy.
01:44:44
Speaker
Not a Mariah reading game. Get these fucking books out of here. You know what? I think we should ban books. Who's with me? Wait, in gaming only, just in the games. Oh no. Oh, sorry. I thought... Did I go a step too far? Too far, too far. Cece, thank you so much, with a $9.99 dono over on YouTube. To me, a good definition of art is the difficulty of translating the creative elements from the original media to another medium. This is why video game movies often fail, difficulty translating.
01:45:14
Speaker
Monster Hunter movie was pretty good. The Monster Hunter movie was pretty good. Very sandy, clear, dry movie.
01:45:21
Speaker
The good definition of art is the difficulty of translating from one to another. So I don't know if I agree with that because, I mean, again, I know a lot of people have very strong opinions on The Last of Us, especially in a post Last of Us 2 world. But I thought The Last of Us 1 was a very good game. And I thought The Last of Us television series was a very good television series. And the adaptation just made sense. It felt like a relatively easy thing to adapt.
01:45:49
Speaker
Not that making it was easy, but it was one of those things you see and you're like, oh, I can immediately envision what this would look like as a TV show because a lot of the game plays like a TV show. I get what they're coming from. But also like there are flaws in that kind of way of thinking about art because, you know, a painting cannot be actively transitioned into a book without having new creative elements injected into it and interpretations of the author. So does that mean that that painting isn't art?
01:46:19
Speaker
because it cannot be translated. To me that's, I call it specialty or exclusive, exclusive art in the way that sort of like PlayStation has exclusive content that you can't get on Xbox. I like to play to the strengths of the medium. I love...
01:46:35
Speaker
not the best books, but if it's a book where I go, I can't see this being a film. I can't see this being a game. I love those more. Games where I go, this could not have been a book. This could not have been a movie. This only excels in this space. Those are my kind of favorites. Same thing for certain films. And so that's just another tag on to it. Art to me is more of a state of being than any sort of actually any quality. It was made by a human trying to express something. Boom. That is just art.
01:47:03
Speaker
But then there's good art, bad art. Yeah, a lot of bad art. There's a very large amount of bad art. Most art is bad. Art is bad, yeah. Art is bad. The piss bandit.
01:47:19
Speaker
Thank you so much pissbandit, it has stolen our piss. 10 minutes reading the layman's balance takes on a MOBA subreddit really makes me wish devs stopped communicating so much. I mean, that's the, it's a double-edged sword, right? You don't want him to just go radio silent, but at the same time, it's like his... I don't know.
01:47:41
Speaker
It's almost good though. If you go, if you give them the cold shoulder, they'll get more rabid and more rabid and any sensible person will start to also ignore them. Cause it's like, Oh, they're throwing a fit. I'm just gonna. Yeah. You can't, you can't be transparent. The only thing you can do is gaslight the worst part of your community into being seen as irrational and like senseless.
01:47:59
Speaker
And the devs don't, in my experience, the devs that I know are either obsessed of it, like looking at the feedback and wanting to get everything or they ignore it. And this is why community managers exist because they're there to sift through that shit. And if there is something that is viable and, oh, we kind of really do need to take this up the ladder and take it to the balance team, they bring that. So then, you know, if you're working on a massive game or MOBA,
01:48:25
Speaker
As a balancer, you don't have the time to read through a thousand comments on this obscure character's function and stuff like that. Does Skull and Bones have a community manager? Did they talk to the community? I hope not.
01:48:43
Speaker
I don't know, but like, if anything, it kind of works. This whole, yeah, God is dead feel of this game. And they're just going to do whatever it is that they want. A lot of waste, maybe. Because every time I keep seeing these people aggressively, like, this game is so bad. Oh my God, it offends. And I'm like, it's not, it is, it's just, eh. You look a little heated, bud. You know, so it was kind of, it's kind of good to not have that back and forth in their case. Except they, you know, Eve, Gil, Mott, whatever his name is, should have definitely not said the quadruple A thing. Less transparency, less. That was real dumb.
01:49:14
Speaker
Yeah, I feel I have so much respect for community managers because like Jay said, not only, you're not fielding, it's not just that you're fielding rational feedback. You're also fielding 90% of feedback from completely irrational people who then border into just like, oh, you're just like racist and awful. You're giving like death threats to your team and everything. And so that is, I don't know, community managers do not make enough money.
01:49:41
Speaker
It's like customer service. It's just like there's hell. It takes a special breeder person to work in that field. Yeah. And then after 10,000 things like that, they snap back once and it's like, oh, that's unprofessional. How could you? You just have to be quiet. You don't even know. Fox D with a $2 don't know. Thank you so much, Fox D. Breath of the Wild Koroks. Good crazy gamer reward. Find all 900 of the Koroks and you just get a golden piece of shit from Hestu.
01:50:06
Speaker
I like it. That's like the truest Nintendo has ever felt about like the people who play their games. It's like, oh, you're really going to run around and collect 900 of these things. All right. Here is your here is your prize. It is a golden piece of shit that has no gameplay. I love that. Yeah. Same thing with sort of Miyazaki, the filmmaker of like, I don't want you to stay in this world. It's about leaving this year and coping with the real world. What is escapism if you're always here? Yeah.
01:50:33
Speaker
Then where do you escape? Yeah. The good shit. Can you watch the man that is nine to five? That's what you did. Oh, there you go. Nine to five is my escape, isn't it?
01:50:42
Speaker
Pissed Bandit back once again to steal our piss, which is good because I have to pee. Five dollar don't know. Forgot to say this, but also RIP Akira Toriyama. Yeah, we talked about this on Friday, I think, before our Unicorn Overlord stream, but yeah. Passing of Akira Toriyama, the famed creator of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, artists behind Chrono Trigger and Dr. Slump and Sad Land. Just an absolute icon.
01:51:07
Speaker
one of the most influential people on pop culture in my life. Yeah, seriously. Um, so, um, yeah. Fox D with a $2 don't know. Thank you so much. Weak, many saves, strong one save. Iron man mode. I don't want to be strong. I want to be weak. I want to be fickle. I want to diversify those bonds. You saw the complaints that hell blade got when they said that. Oh yeah. Yeah. They don't want that. You know what's going on.
01:51:35
Speaker
Gamers be trippin', that's what they say about gamers. I'd like to, there should be a game where it's just like, once you've played it, or like, that's it, it just, it's gone. It self-destructs. It just appears? I would love that, I would love that. No one can ever play it again. Miyamoto, someone comes to your house and just snaps your disc in half.
01:51:52
Speaker
Yeah. That'd be real. Impy with a two Euro don't know. Thank you so much. Impy. Abzu made me cry from how beautiful it was. 10 out of 10 Impy. It's great. It's the best swimming in any game ever. Oh, gamer tears. Best swimming. No, that's swimming. Tell me a game with better swimming. I'd call you a fucking liar. Last game to make you cry. What was it? Last game to make me cry. Last game.
01:52:22
Speaker
Call my mom afterwards. That got me. Because it was so niche, that one. The game hasn't made me cry in a few years, but I feel like I cried during, like, probably 10 games during the pandemic, but I think that was more of a me thing.
01:52:36
Speaker
I was like, look how beautiful my island animal crossing is. I haven't seen my friends in six months. Were you crying The Avengers? What were you playing? No, Final Fantasy 7, Remake came out, Jesse Beygan Remake, and Spiritfarer came out.
01:52:52
Speaker
What was that live service game you picked up? The Avengers. Avengers, yeah. Yeah. I miss my Avengers. Mine was Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the ending of that game. That's a good one. That's a good one. Fucking Ori was good. Have you seen anything about No Rest for Their Wicked, Moon Studios next game? No. Yeah, I love those. I love those, but I've got a bit of a death of the author thing with the
01:53:21
Speaker
With the movie studios with that team. So yeah, I won't go into it, but yeah, I know some things. There you go. Tread. I'm crying for that. No, Alex Holly. For and I don't know. Thank you so much, Alex. Do you think live service devs should share, should change a character 1% a month until where they want it, not tell anyone and get less roadblocks like death by a thousand cuts kind of.
01:53:45
Speaker
Uh, I don't know. Well, thing is gamers don't, they want their games to always be in a state of fluctuation. And so if they can't feel it, they might get blowback. Sure. Sure. Even when in the end, they're like, you miserable gets every last 20, he's actually been buff by 20% in the last 20 months. You just didn't feel it. Yeah. Well, he needs more, you know, like it is their perception rules reality. So, uh, that they will get blowback because it will feel like they've done nothing.
01:54:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:54:19
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting way to put it. I'd be curious to see if there are any games that are just changing things and people just don't realize it. Be like, if I moved something on your desk a little bit every day, how long would it take you to notice that I was fucking up your desk? Was it the Stephen King says true horror is coming home from work and realizing all of your furniture has been moved two inches to the right? Yeah. It'd be like, wait, is this real or is this... You would notice that, right? And that's like, who did this? Why have you done this? Yeah, yeah. I'd know because of all the mug stains.
01:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of things everywhere. Stephen. Stephen King, then.
01:54:56
Speaker
That's funny. Thank you so much for the don't know. Jay Ansell with a two pound don't know. Thank you so much. Marty, do you like a burger from McDonald's? I don't have McDonald's non breakfast very often. I don't mind. And if I get a burger, I'm not like Big Mac and I'll get like a, I'll get like two cheeseburgers and I'll get extra pickles and extra onions on them. Cause then I feel like I got a good match.
01:55:20
Speaker
The one thing, and I probably, I have McDonald's probably like once a year. One thing I do fuck with, I like McDonald's breakfast. I like their hash browns. I like a sausage biscuit. I think it's only like $2.50. Nice little combo there. That's not a bad deal. Damn, yeah. It's like two breakfast burritos for a dollar. Tea? Can't fuck with that. I think it's my chance. Fred E, with a 4.99 dono, thank you so much. Fred, live service games should last at least a year or two. Otherwise, what did we buy?
01:55:50
Speaker
I'm sure they all intend to last a year or two, right? Yeah, that's the problem there. So they're selling on intent. The intent is to last forever. Yeah. Oh, if you've fought a game for $60 and it lasts you a year of gameplay that you, you've got more than enough out of that. Yeah. Like I was done without in ringing a month. Yeah.
01:56:08
Speaker
yeah like you if you're talking about like how much is a game worth like oh every hour of gameplay i have this argument with people as i'm like because i'm an avid mmo player people like you pay like 9.99 a month to play this game and i'm like that's less than a cinema ticket and i play this game like five hours a night yeah every day like
01:56:31
Speaker
Like, I get my money's worth from this and I'm helping support, keep the servers up, get new content, stuff like that. Like, for me, it makes sense. Like, you're getting your money's worth. I think the conversation of dollar to hour comes up more when the economy's in tatters. When we have money galore, what do we care, you know?
01:56:52
Speaker
Jesus, Ludo, you're going nuts back there. Yeah, she, she doesn't like it because I sit here and I, you know, work on design all day. I'm silent. She's like talking. She's like, Oh my God, it's go time. Like it's, it's time. It's almost go time. Don't worry, Ludo.
01:57:08
Speaker
Just Doc with a $10 don't know. Thank you so much. Just Doc Marty Josh Jacobs is a packer any thoughts Also, why would anyone pay Kirk Cousins $180 million sorry for being off topic, but I had to share just doc that literally happened during this This is big news for me if they keep Josh Jacobs and Aaron Jones as a one-two combo. That is crazy I'd imagine AJ Dylan is gone
01:57:30
Speaker
But that's a crazy one one two combo. Also. I saw that the Bears signed D'Andre Swift, which is also exciting Get a little Caleb Williams in there. Get a little D'Andre Swift. We got it going I'm not saying 17 and 0 for the Bears. I'm not saying it. However, I'm not not saying 17 and 0 So I'm putting a lot of money on 17 though. All right My goal this year is to become a degenerate gambler
01:57:52
Speaker
I mean you gotta start somewhere. I started so I made some money like I'm gonna be honest I made some money last night in the Oscars. Let me tell you. Thank you. Thank you. Praise be to Hayao Miyazaki When in that when in that beautiful best animated picture, I was like, what was the ROI? I didn't I didn't I didn't put a ton of money just a couple different props and they paid out in the end So I was in I was in the clearing
01:58:12
Speaker
Cause I use it, I used to do that for the CSGO lounge, but I would always, I was always really decent for it, but I hated that the payouts were so low for being right. So I was like, all right, I'm only going to show up for the underdog ones that I think are going to win. I'm going to put down everything. Some real sicko shit and then put all the money. You've cracked gambling. And I made a lot and then they stopped it. I was like, well, there we go. I made like five hundred bucks on those nasty. And I would just ask friends, I was like, can I have your 18 cent guns skins? Like the ones you don't want here.
01:58:42
Speaker
Come in, I said... You get enough of them and you just wait out the wave. Lauren with a $5 don't know, thank you so much. Atlas doesn't owe me anything, but I keep getting Persona Therapy. Anyways, between P5R and current playthrough of P3R, 400 hours of P5R definitely changed my life. The Persona games are so good.
01:59:02
Speaker
I'm getting through more and more Persona 3. I'm near the end. I'm at the end of December. Only got a month left in that game, and let me tell you, delightful. It feels like that's the perception of what's owed to us. It's like I got in here because at some point in my life I played some crazy
01:59:20
Speaker
amazing game that made me go, yes, I want this to be my hobby. I want this like to be something I am vibing constantly. So I consistently want those highs. That's why so many like middling games that do nothing wrong come off as offensive. Sure, sure. Like I wanted the high. Yeah, I'm at the light. What is this? That light.
01:59:41
Speaker
So over in Kofi, Just Doc donated, thank you so much, 13 minutes ago. Thank you so much, Just Doc. A long time, first time, just wanted to show some love and shout out to Frost for being from Virginia, I think. Marty for getting the idea of Gumby Wing stuck in my head many moons ago. Did I talk about Gumby Wing, like Gundam Wing, but with Gumby? And Jamaite for rising up my list of favorite content creators.
02:00:08
Speaker
Just thank you so much. Also Gumby wing not bad. Are you from Virginia right one of the Virginia's the Western regular? Yeah, West regular. Okay, regular is regular better than West. I don't know. I don't think so. No, I was in the boonies with rural as a state of mind. So it was a horrible place for those. Absolutely a state of mind. Yeah. Gumby wing. I love it. And Jay and sell for the last message ever.
02:00:36
Speaker
in second wind history. With a £5 don't know, thank you so much. I read that McD's has approximately 2000 different cows per burger slash patty mixing those meat smarty. I feel like this hasn't contributed much to the topic. 2000 cows for each burger? You know what that eats? Takes a village. It takes a village of cows. Jay Ansell, did you post the other Mackys don't know?
02:01:00
Speaker
Was that two different, Max? Yeah, yeah. You've just been waiting to drop this knowledge bomb. You're the big McDonald's PR. The knowledge on these burgers. Oh, I'm gonna- You've got mackerels on the mind. Yeah, I'm fine. Like, as somebody who likes hot dog, I don't know what's going on. Hot dogs have gym class mattresses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it doesn't bother me at all. They've got gator hoofs and gym class mattresses in theirs. Yeah. No, I don't mind. $2,000, that just means you got a lot of history in there.
02:01:28
Speaker
I appreciate it. Y'all eating fucking steaks from one cow while I'm here just feeding the village. And six bit with a five pound dono, I lied before when I said it was the last one in second one history. Six bit with a five pound dono, thank you so much. As an artist, the best advice I got, it insults the audience to make for collective popularity over artistic vision. Game Dev should always risk making bad art.
02:01:53
Speaker
I don't know. There's pop art. You know, there's a lot of things. It's just like Doja Cat just came under fire because she made like one or two albums where she was like, I'm just here for the money. And they were top top of the charts for the whole time. And then she went on Twitter was like, I hate all my fans. They just eat this garbage.
02:02:11
Speaker
And they were like, we still love you though. And so, you know. I'm starting to be on Team Doja Cat. I'm liking this. Yeah. Well-dwelled out Doja Cat. Oh, you don't want to be on Team Doja Cat. Okay, never mind. I've renounced my membership to Team Doja Cat. I'm sorry to say. I don't know anything about Doja Cat. Yeah, it was a free trial. That's fine. Yeah.
02:02:32
Speaker
It's a weird one. What are they? Oh, it's nothing. That's what we've gleaned from all this. Also, everything. Everything and everything. Just like the James Bond game. Exactly. And their firstborn. We did it. We made it to the end of a show. I can't believe it. I can't believe we're still awake. I can't believe I'm pissed myself because I've had to go for the last hour.
02:02:53
Speaker
Jamaite, what do you have going on? What should folks check out? What's your mother's maiden name? My mother's maiden name is Crabtree, which is Banter. You could have been a Crabtree. I could have been a Crabtree, but it's a bit of a bad name, so apologies to all Crabtrees out there, including my family.
02:03:13
Speaker
But anyway, I have streams, potential streams in this week. I don't know. They might crop up. They might, may not. I have- You shoot whatever you want, baby. You give me a time. We'll fucking have you play World of Warcraft. Immediately after this, Jay rants about World of Warcraft stream incoming. That's a joke, but maybe. There you go. Oh, you guys are gonna be streaming at noon on Wednesday. Yes, we are, yes. Lullaby of Life.
02:03:40
Speaker
Yes, Lullaby of Life stream from me, Marty, me and Frost. On Wednesday, I have a design delve coming out this Friday on the secret to making any game satisfying.
02:03:53
Speaker
So that should be a spicy one. And then immediately- What does that mean? You'll have to click to find out, bitch. Is it umami? Yeah, no. No, it's just salt. Adding a little bit of mouthfeel to it. It's salt. Yeah, and then immediately afterwards on Sunday, I'll be heading out to GDC. So I'll be away for a week. San Francisco, the city by the bay.
02:04:18
Speaker
So San Francisco keep an eye out. I'll be walking around being filmed for five days. But if you're in San Francisco and you hand Jay a sourdough bread bowl full of chowder, he'll he's legally obligated to eat it on the street. Yeah. All right. We'll do. Yeah.
02:04:36
Speaker
If you bring the child, I will eat it and we will film it and it will be up on second wind. You know what the best thing about a bread bowl is when you're done is fucking done. There's nothing there. No. What about the fork?
02:04:49
Speaker
No, you don't. You get spread fork. I'm made of bread. I thought we should bake things. Cupcake wrappers, have the cupcake wrapper be edible and so that you can eat the whole fucking thing. Like a sugar based cupcake wrapper. I don't know how that would work. That's not my business. I don't need to deal with that. No, just I want to eat the wrapper.
02:05:11
Speaker
Think about it. You can eat the wrappers. Just eat the wrappers. No, no, don't, yeah. No, I am edible. Poos are going to be weird. I am edible, children, but that is cannibalism. My poos are going to be weird. That is me. That's all my stuff. Check it out. Hell yeah. Fungus finder with the $2 don't know. Thanks for this nice beefy stream. Thank you for this nice beefy stream as well. Frost, what you got, Gona?
02:05:35
Speaker
Let's see here. A new coltec just dropped on my latest obsession. 100 hours and climbing on that there Bellatro. What's the hype? What's going on? What's this card game? It's poker too. Just for you. Go watch that. We'll be streaming on Wednesday, as you said. And the next one after that would probably be Saturday. A little light year frontier. That's what you think. Because tomorrow, you and I are back at noon.
02:06:01
Speaker
Oh, look at that. With a special guest in his name, Darren Z. Mooney. I don't know what Darren's middle name is. It's probably doesn't start with a Z. It's Craig. I don't know if there's a lot of Irish names with a Z. Darren Mooney is joining Frost and I tomorrow at noon central, so the time of this stream. We'll be playing a game, just sort of a background. I think it's probably gonna be GoldenEye, if I'm gonna be honest. I'm just gonna play GoldenEye in the background, but we're just gonna talk to Darren about movies, about TV. What has he been watching? What did he think of the Oscars?
02:06:30
Speaker
Does his middle name start with a Z? There's really no way to know. I should watch GoldenEye before. You should do that immediately after this. It's a really good movie. It's a great movie. So yeah, tune in for that. And then I think Nick's going to be back tomorrow. We might be doing Firelink. We might be doing... Nick's cursed. He was supposed to be back last night and then he's still not back.
02:06:53
Speaker
So there's really no way of knowing anything that Darren is doing or that Nick is doing and then also in terms of streams later This evening. I will be back filling in for Jesse and Casey on hidden gems with Jess and at 6 p.m Playing a little Gator game Delightful game from like a year or two ago that if you like to get much sort hike this is like that It's just just a delightful little romp where you play a Gator and let me tell you give me more games where I could play as a Gator see wearing
02:07:23
Speaker
He's wearing shoes. Yeah. This is what you asked. Yeah. Is he wearing shoes? I actually don't know. I just assumed he's like a bipedal gator. He's like a humanoid gator. Okay. Well, then even more so, I hope he's wearing shoes of his bipedal. Yeah. I mean, if he's just like foot, yeah, if he's barefoot, like running around, I draw the line a bet. Wait, we've got footage. Is he wearing shoes?
02:07:42
Speaker
I can't remember. I know he has a hat because he kind of looks like Link. Do you even wear shoes? He's not wearing shoes. So, devs, if you want me to get interested, I'd say just mod in some shoes. Are you like the opposite of a foot guy? Yeah, cover up those puppies or I'm not.
02:07:59
Speaker
Throw up those pups. I'm all coming. And then, yeah, again, tomorrow, this will be tonight at 6 p.m. and then tomorrow at noon central, Frost, Darren and I will be jamming through some games and just gabbing. Fucking gabbing about everything.
02:08:13
Speaker
So once again, thank you all so much for tuning in. Thank you to everyone for your generous super chats, just for being great in the audience. We always appreciate that. Thank you so much for Eric, as always. Incredible production. Thank you so much, Ludo, for putting up with us for well over two hours. We appreciate it. And for Jay and Frost, this was Marty. This was Windbreaker episode number 14. Thank you all so much. And we'll see you later today for Hidden Gems at 6 p.m. Bye, everyone.
02:08:55
Speaker
you